Crampton looked pityingly down at the anguished countenance before him. "And Henry Vine? He refuted your charge? Speak, man, or you will drive me mad." "Henry Vine did not deny the charge, sir. He was manly enough for that." "Crampton, is this all true?" "It was my duty, sir." "He does not deny it? Oh! it seems monstrous. But you said the police; you gave information. Crampton--his father--his sister--my poor child!" "Is saved from a villain, Mr Van Heldre!" cried the old clerk fiercely. "Better she should have died than have married such a man as he." "And I--I lying here helpless as a child," said the sick man feebly. "But this must all be stopped. Crampton, you should not have done all this. Now go at once, fetch George Vine here, and--Henry--the young man. Where is he?" "Gone, sir, to answer for his crime," said the old man solemnly. "Henry Vine is dead." Volume 2, Chapter XVIII. A TITLE OF HONOUR. Duncan Leslie sought patiently and well, but he was as unsuccessful as the rest, and after searching from a boat and being pulled close in along the shore, he rose at daybreak one morning, and crossing the harbour, went up along the cliff away to the east, and wherever he could find a place possible for a descent, he lowered himself from among the rocks, and searched there. The work was toilsome, but it was an outlet for his pent-up energy, and he went on and on, reaching places where the boat could not land him; but even here he found that he had been forestalled, for hunting along among the broken rocks, he could see a figure stepping cautiously from crag to crag, where the waves washed in, and the slimy sea-wrack made the task perilous, the more so that it was the figure of a woman, whom he recognised as the old fish-dealer by the maund hanging on her back from the band across her forehead. As he toiled after her she looked round, and waited till he came up, and addressed him in a singing tone. "Not found him, have you, sir?" Leslie shook his head, and continued his search, seeing the old woman on two alternate days still peering about among the rocks, like many more, for the young master, and more stubborn in her search than any of the rest. By slow degrees the search was given up. It had been kept up long after what would have been customary under the circumstances, some of the searchers working from sheer respect for the Vines, others toiling on in the hope of reward. But there was no result, and the last of the boats, that containing Duncan Leslie, returned to the harbour, after days of seeking to and fro along the coast. "I felt it were no good all along, Mr Leslie sir," said the old fisherman who had been chartered for the escape. "Sea's a mystery, sir, and when she gets hold of a body she hides it where mortal man can't find it, and keeps it till she's tired, and then she throws it ashore. I've watched it well these thirty years, and one gets to know by degrees." Leslie bowed his head dejectedly.