Harcourt Lowther had his copy of the great journal on the day when Maude read that horrible paragraph. Roderick had called at Stuccoville during Mrs. Tredethlyn’s seclusion, and had heard of the Cornishman’s departure, and the name of the vessel he had gone in, from Julia Desmond. The schemer turned deadly pale when his brother read him the brief account of one of those terrible catastrophes which come upon mortal travellers now and then, to teach them how frail is man’s hold of that wondrous power by which modern science has learnt to rule the elements. The coolest villain who ever planned a comrade’s destruction must surely suffer one sharp pang of remorse when he knows that the hand which has so often clasped his own is really cold. To Harcourt Lowther the wealthy Cornishman had never been anything worse than an impediment. He was gone now; there was little doubt of that. Midway between her starting place and her destination, the _Kingfisher_, sailing gaily on a placid sea, had succumbed to a worse foe than tempest or hurricane, and all on board her had perished. A fragment of charred timber, branded with the name of the steamer, had been picked up by a homeward-bound vessel; and in the calm moonlit night the blazing ship had been seen by distant voyagers a lurid speck upon the silvery horizon. By these and many other tokens the fact of the catastrophe had been made known; and in a hundred British households there was mourning for lost friends and kinsmen. After the first shock that came upon him with these sudden tidings, Harcourt Lowther gave a long sigh of relief. “It was the fellow’s own doing,” he muttered. “If he had not made a quarrel with me, this would never have happened. And he’s gone! Poor lad! He was not such a bad fellow, after all. Better to die that way than of delirium tremens,” added Mr. Lowther, with a furtive glance towards a tall smoke-coloured bottle which was apt to adorn his table very often nowadays. “And so my Maude is free--at last! Do you know, Roderick, it seems to me as if I had lived twenty years or so since my return from Van Diemen’s Land? and now that the luck turns, and the winning colour comes up for the first time, I feel as if I had almost outlived the power to care much about it. Roderick!” cried the invalid, with a sharp suddenness that startled his brother, “did Folson tell you there was any serious damage done to my head by that ugly fall the other night? I know he has talked to you about me. I heard you and him muttering together yesterday, when I was lying half asleep in the next room.” Mr. Folson was the medical man who had attended Harcourt Lowther after the scuffle with Francis, and who had brought all his science to bear for the preservation of the handsome face without which his patient would have been so small a creature.