At length, he shut the windows and lighted the candles, and in about ten minutes after, a gentleman, dressed in the very height of fashion, with a large blue military cloak, of the finest cloth, hanging from his shoulders, entered the room, and advancing to the fire, gazed into it for a minute or two in silence. The other personage whom we have mentioned, stood at a respectful distance, without saying a single word, till at length his master, for so it was, turned round and gave him his hat and wet cloak, saying, "Here, Martini, take these, and then go down to the beach. It is a terrible night, and I am uneasy about the ship--one can see the surf running upon the sands quite plain. There was a vessel too, apparently coming into the Downs, but I could make nothing of it myself, and the jargon of these pilots I do not pretend to understand. I suppose the boy will come ashore directly, of course." "If he can, sir," replied the man, with a strong foreign accent; "but I should not like to trust myself, I know, in an open boat, on such a night as this." "There are several boats out," said Lieberg, for it was our friend who spoke; and then making a sign for the man to leave him, he sat till nearly eleven o'clock at night in that worst of all states of idleness; the idleness of a strange inn, which is the next thing to solitary confinement. Lieberg, on most occasions, had plenty of means of employing and amusing himself, but at the present moment his mind was evidently not at ease. He gazed during the greater part of the evening into the fire, and one might have supposed that it was the thought of being baffled in his pursuit, by the destruction of the ship which bore William Barham, that troubled him, had not a word or two escaped from his lips towards the end of the period we have mentioned, which shewed that, in reality, some better feelings were mingled with his emotions, and that it was about the youth himself, and the risk he ran for the time, he was anxious. The words indeed, dear reader, to which I allude, were all harsh, and, apparently, unfeeling; but still they shewed that Lieberg was occupied rather with the boy's fate than with his own plans and purposes. "Curse him!" he said, rising from his chair, towards eleven o'clock--"he may as well die that way as any other. He would be hanged, that's certain, sooner or later, if he escaped the water. So it is as well if he be drowned after all. There is no reason for my making myself uneasy about him. It might be as well, indeed, if he had some other business in hand when called upon to join the world of spirits; but I dare say, let him live as long as a patriarch, he would be engaged in some rascality at the day of his death, and as well this as anything else; so good bye to him!"