Noy's first act was to turn again to the gallery with a purpose to inquire where John Barron might be found; but he recollected that many picture catalogues contained the private addresses of the exhibitors, and accordingly consulted the list he had brought with him. There he found the name and also the house in which the owner of it dwelt-- JOHN BARRON, No. 6 Melbury Gardens, S. W. Only hours now separated him from his goal, and it seemed strange to Noy that he should have thus come in sight of it so suddenly. But his wits cooled and with steady system he followed the path long marked out. He stood and looked in at a gunsmith's window for ten minutes, then moved forward to another. At the shop-fronts of cutlers he also dawdled, but finally returned to the first establishment which had attracted him, entered, and, for the sum of two pounds, purchased a small, five-chambered revolver with a box of cartridges. He then went back to his lodging, and set to work to find the position of Melbury Gardens upon his map. This done the man marked his road to that region, outlining with a red chalk pencil the streets through which he would have to walk before reaching it. Throughout the afternoon he continued his preparations, acting very methodically, and setting his house in order with the deliberation of one who knows that he is going to die, but not immediately. Sometimes he rested from the labor of letter-writing to think and rehearse again the scene which was to close that day. A thousand times he had already done so; a thousand times the imaginary interview had been the last thought in his waking brain; but now the approach of reality swept away those unreal dialogues, dramatic entrances, exits and events of the great scene as he had pictured it. The present moment found Noy's brain blank as to everything but the issue; and he surprised himself by discovering that his mind now continually recurred to those events which would follow the climax, while yet the death of John Barron was unaccomplished. His active thoughts, under conditions of such excitation as the day had brought upon the top of his discovery, traveled with astounding speed, and it was not John Barron's end but his own which filled the imagination of the sailor as he wrote. The shadow of the gallows was on the paper, though the event which was to bring this consummation still lay some hours deep in unrecorded time. But, for Noy, John Barron was as good as dead, and himself as good as under sentence of death.