A confused and inarticulate scene ensued, which Vincent remembered afterwards only like a dream; the woman's scream--the interference of Fordham, upon whom his fellow-traveller turned with sudden fury--the explanation to which he listened without understanding it, and which at first roused him to wild rage as a pretence and falsehood. But even Vincent at last, struggling into soberer consciousness as the day broadened ever chiller and more grey over the little group of strange faces round him, came to understand and make out that both Fordham and he had been deceived. Nobody had been there--letters addressed both to Fordham himself, and to Colonel Mildmay, had been for some days received; but these, it appeared, were only a snare laid to withdraw the pursuers from the right scent. Not to be convinced, in the sullen stupor of his excitement, Vincent followed Fordham into all the gloomy corners of the neglected house--seeing everything without knowing what he saw. But one thing was plain beyond the possibility of doubt, that Susan was not there. "I am to blame for this fruitless journey," said Fordham, with a touch of sympathy more than he had yet exhibited; "perhaps personal feeling had too much share in it; now I trust you will have some breakfast before you set out again. So far as my assistance can be of any use to you----" "I thank you," said Vincent, coldly; "it is a business in which a stranger can have no interest. You have done all you cared to do," continued the young man, hastily gathering up the overcoat which he had thrown down on entering; "you have vindicated yourself--I will trouble you no further. If I encounter any one interested in Mr. Fordham," he concluded, with difficulty and bitterness, but with a natural generosity which, even in his despair, he could not belie, "I will do him justice." He made an abrupt end, and turned away, not another word being possible to him. Fordham, not without a sentiment of sympathy, followed him to the door, urging refreshment, rest, even his own society, upon his companion of the night. Vincent's face, more and more haggard--his exhausted excited air--the poignant wretchedness of his youth, on which the older man looked, not without reminiscences, awoke the sympathy and compassion of the looker-on, even in the midst of less kindly emotions. But Fordham's sympathy was intolerable to poor Vincent. He took his seat with a sullen weariness once more by the talkative driver, who gave him an unheeded history of all the Fordhams. As they drove along the bleak moorland road, an early church-bell tingled into the silence, and struck, with horrible iron echoes, upon the heart of the minister of Salem. Sunday morning! Life all disordered, incoherent, desperate--all its usages set at nought and duties left behind. Nothing could have added the final touch of conscious derangement and desperation like the sound of that bell; all his existence and its surroundings floated about