Needless to say, however, that monotonous as the days were, and blank the distance, time and the hour, and that unmelodious screw got through them. Gervase landed at Queenstown, taking with him every newspaper he could collect as he hurried to the railway. But to be sure, all that he could get was the issue of that day, not the now far back numbers which would have carried on the story for which he thirsted. That story was now over; it had ended, and there was no more of it. Burton, Baber, & Co. had gone down like a stone in that sea of mishaps and misadventure; the public interest had deserted it, and no man spoke of it any more. Gervase, when he came to think, saw very quickly how it was, and called himself a fool to expect anything different; but yet the shock of the disappointment was great. He sat ruminating it as the train dashed along through the silence of the night. It went quickly, making more visible progress than the steamboat, yet was ever slow to the galloping thoughts which were there and back again, impatient of their incompetence to attain any knowledge, a hundred times in an hour. At last he reached London on a mild and misty morning of May. The air was full of a quiet drizzle, the pavements wet with the mild innocent rain. There was nobody to meet him, naturally enough, for nobody knew that this was the day of his arrival. He could not help thinking that had Madeline been arriving, miserable and full of trouble, he would have divined it. He did not even know where to go, in the sudden ignorance which had come upon him of all his own most intimate affairs. He could scarcely expect to find his father still at Harley Street, but this was the only place to which he could go, where he must, at least, find an address, something to guide him. It was miserable to put his portmanteaux into a cab, not knowing where he was to find a shelter; for though he gave Harley Street as his destination, he felt as if he were about to drive vaguely through the cold streets, he knew not whither, in search of some spot in which he could take refuge. It seemed another day of feverish suspense before he got to the well-known street, where everything looked so terribly the same as usual, as if no change had happened. When he reached the door, and dashing out before the cab had stopped, knocked loudly with a summons that seemed to wake echoes all round, and to go through and through his own aching brain, Gervase had come to the extreme limit of his strength. He felt helplessly that he had no voice left with which to ask the question, “Where has my father gone?”