“MY DEAR VAVASOUR,--You will be surprised to find that I have _absquattulated_. Beggars mustn’t be choosers, and I should have been only too glad if circumstances had allowed of my remaining in England; but the fact is, I made a bad business of my book--hedged, and that kind of thing; so, having no chance left but to sell Rough Diamond, I did it on the nail. My beastly creditors have made London too hot to hold me, and as debts are transferable in these days, and be hanged to them! I must keep dark for the present, or they’ll have me in _quod_ in some confounded foreign place or other. Of course you are an exception; and when I am settled anywhere you shall hear from me. The missus desires to be kindly remembered. Nothing new about Honor--the man is a brute. Ta-ta, old fellow, and believe me yours truly, “F. NORCOTT.” Arthur, after making himself master of the contents of this flippant epistle, stood for a moment like one turned, after the manner of Lot’s wife of old, into a statue. “When did they go?” he said at last. “I came by appointment; this must have been quite a sudden start. G--! I can’t understand it! Gone, do you say? Impossible!” Miss Lydia sniggered conceitedly at this assertion. “The Colonel never came back at all,” she said; “he sent for Mrs. Norcott--or else they’d settled it between them afore, which missus she thinks they did. Any way, Mrs. Norcott she packed up, and paid all that was owing the first thing this morning, and by two o’clock she was off, and missus, she had the bill put up at onst.” To this short but lucid explanation Arthur listened as one who heareth not. The melancholy truth that he had--in vulgar parlance--been _done_ was beginning to dawn upon his mind. That Fred Norcott--base and unprincipled as he suspected him to be--could have the unparalleled audacity to deny and ignore the fact of his (Arthur’s) ownership of the Derby winner was, however, almost too wonderful to be true. His estimate of Honor Beacham’s father, though about as low a one as it is possible for one person to entertain about another, did nevertheless fall short of believing this man capable of actual felony. That he had trusted him so completely--had confided so entirely in the honour of his associate, was alone a sufficient proof that he did not consider Fred Norcott to be capable of an act of fraud. The transfer of Rough Diamond from Arthur’s ownership to the nominal possession of the quondam cavalry officer had been made in a decidedly loose and unbusiness-like manner--the very nature of the transaction necessitating to a certain extent this unsatisfactory mode of proceeding. There was a secret to be kept--a secret which was of vital importance to the well-being of one of the contracting parties--and therefore it followed that “all things” were not, on this occasion, “done decently and in order.”