Look at him now, reader. The tall, fine, well-dressed young fellow, his pale face anxious with not-attempted-to-be-concealed care, his arms swaying, the silk-lined breasts of his frock-coat thrown back, as he strides on resolutely down Wellington Street! Neither to the right nor the left looks he: his eyes are cast forth over the people's heads, towards the bridge and the river that it spans, as if staring for the information he is going to seek. One great feature in Roland was his hopefulness. Each time he started for Waterloo Bridge, or Scotland Yard, or Hamish Channing's, or Mr. Greatorex's, or any other place where news might possibly be awaiting him, renewed hope was to the full as buoyant in his heart as it had been that memorable day when he had anchored in the beautiful harbour of Port Natal, and gazed on the fair shore with all its charming scenery that seemed to Roland as a very paradise. Bright with hope as his heart had been then, so was it now in the intermittent intervals. So was it at this moment as he bore on, down Wellington Street. "Well," said he to the toll-keeper. "Anything turned up?" "Not a bit on't," responded the man. "Nor likely to." Roland went through, perched himself on the parapet, and took his fill of gazing at the river. Now on this side the bridge, now leaping over to that. A steamer passed, a rowing-boat or two; but Arthur Channing was not in them. Roland looked to the mud on the sides, he threw his gaze forwards and backwards, up and down, round and about. In vain. All features were very much the same that they had been from the day of his first search: certainly returning to him no signs of Arthur. And down went hope again, as completely as the pears had gone, earlier in the day, at a corner stall. Despair had possession of him now. "You say that no suspicious character went on to the bridge that night, so far as you can recollect," resumed Roland in the gloomiest tone, when he had walked lingeringly back to the man at the gate. Lingeringly, because some kind of clue seemed to lie with that bridge and he was always loth to quit it. If he did not suspect Arthur might be lying buried underneath the stone pavement, it seemed something like it. "I didn't say so," interrupted the gate-keeper, in rather a surly tone. "What I said was, as there warn't nothing suspicious chucked over that night." "You can't tell. You might not hear." "Well, I haven't got no time to jabber with you today." "If I kept this turnstile, I should make it my business to mark all suspicious night characters that went through; and watch them." "Oh, would you! And how 'ud you know which was the suspicious ones? Come! They don't always carry their bad marks on their backs, they don't; some on 'em don't look no different from you."