It must have been an hour afterwards that I saw him turn into the lane from a passage almost opposite to where I stood. I expected him to cross the road, but he cast not so much as a glance towards the inn, and walked slowly past on the further side. I flung up the window, thinking that he had forgotten his errand, and leaned out to call him. But or ever I could speak he banged his stick angrily on the ground, raised it with a quick jerk and pointed twice over his shoulder behind him. The movement was full of significance, and I drew back into the shadow of the curtain. Mr. Vincott mounted the steps of a house, knocked at the door, and was admitted. No sooner had he entered than a man stepped out from the passage. He was of a large, heavy build, and yet, as I surmised from the litheness of his walk, very close-knit. His face was swarthy and bronzed, and he wore ear-rings in his ears. I should have taken him for an English sailor but that there was a singular compactness in his bearing, and his gait was that of a man perfectly balanced. For awhile he stood loitering at the entrance to the passage, and then noticing the inn, crossed quickly over and passed through the door beneath me. My senses were now strained into activity, and I watched with a quivering eagerness for the end of this strange game of hide-and-seek. I had not long to wait. The little lawyer came down the steps, stopped at the bottom, took a pinch of snuff with great deliberation, and blowing his nose with unnecessary noise and vehemence, walked down the street. He had nearly reached the end of it before his pursuer lounged out of the inn and strolled in the same direction. The moment Vincott turned the corner, however, he lengthened his stride; I saw him pause at the last house and peep round the angle, draw back for a few seconds, and then follow stealthily on the trail. The incident reawakened all my perplexed conjectures as to the business on which I was engaged. Why should the fact of my arrival in the town be so studiously concealed? Or again, what reason could there be for any one to suspect or fear it? The questions circled through my mind in an endless repetition. There was but one man who could answer them, and he lay helpless in his cell, adding to the torture of his last hours the belief that his friend had played him false. The thought stung me like Ino's gadfly. I paced up and down the room with my eyes ever on the street for Vincott's return. My heart rose on each sound of a nearing step, only to sink giddily with its dying reverberation. The daylight fell, a fog rolled up from the river in billows of white smoke, and still Vincott did not come. The very clock by the chimney seemed to tick off the seconds faster and faster until I began to fancy that the sounds would catch one another and run by in one continuous note. At last I heard a quick pattering noise of feet on the pavement below, and Vincott dashed up the stairs and burst into the room.