"In an hour or two after that, word was brought that he was dead," presently resumed George. "He died with the suspicion of the guilt upon him, and nobody cared to refute it. I talked to Hopper till he said I worried him, asking him to take it up. I went and saw Mr. Trace, and told him all this, but he only shook his head, and spoke kindly to me, and said there was no doubt. I knew there was no doubt, but it was the other way; no doubt of his innocence." "Will you let me ask you one question, George? If your father was not guilty, who, in your opinion, was?" "I don't much like to say," was the answer. "And at the best, it is but a doubt." "I think you had better say it." "I fancied it was Hopper." "Hopper!" repeated Mr. Loftus, lifting his head quickly. "No; that was impossible." "His manner made me doubt him at first: it was very singular. I am sure that he knew who was guilty; and I think it was himself. And then, sir, you know he disappeared very soon after." "Yes; that is, he disappeared from Liverpool. He may have taken a clerkship in some London house. But Hopper could not have been guilty. There's the dinner bell. Once more, let me thank you for the service you have rendered my boy Richard." George Paradyne followed Mr. Loftus down stairs, conscious that his words had made no sort of impression upon him. It was always so: himself against the world. Even his own mother, his father's wife, had never listened to this persistently expressed belief in the innocence. Mr. Loftus knew the theory to be a mistaken one; but he thought none the worse of the boy for entertaining it. CHAPTER XVI. The Duel. The dinner-table was full. Old Felix, the head waiter, had caused a separate table to be laid for the party of which Sir Simon Orville was regarded as the head; it included the Galls, the Loftus's, young Paradyne, and a friend of Mr. Gall's, named Bouncely, just arrived by the train from Paris; all, in fact, save the resuscitated Dick, who had been brought home, and was upstairs between a few hot blankets. It was a very singular thing that the conversation at this side table of theirs should turn on duelling. Bertie Loftus, recounting it later to Onions, called it a "droll chance." But nothing happens by chance in life. Mr. Bouncely, a ponderous gentleman in black, with gold spectacles, a huge bunch of seals hanging down from a chain in a by-gone fashion, and who was an alderman or sheriff, or something grand and great of that nature in the City, had recently been enjoying a brief sojourn at Frankfort-on-the-Maine. He was brim-full of a duel just fought there; had not, as he expressed it, got over the horror yet.