At length the clock struck four. "The hour for departure will come, and I shall leave this house as full of doubt and uncertainty as when I entered it!" he ejaculated, starting up. His eye chanced to fall upon a long nail in the wall opposite to the bed from which he had just risen. A scheme which had already suggested itself to his mind, now assumed a feasible aspect:—he knew that the door was only locked, and not bolted; and that nail seemed to promise the means of egress. He, however, first examined the candle which had been left him, and which still burned in the corner where he had concealed it:—to his joy he found that there was an inch remaining. "With the assurance of light for another half hour, and good courage," he said to himself, "I may yet accomplish my purpose." Having extracted the nail from the wall, he proceeded to pick the lock of the room-door—an operation which he successfully achieved in a few minutes. Without a moment's hesitation, he issued from the room, bearing the candle in his hand. As he crossed the landing towards the staircase, which he resolved to ascend, his foot came in contact with some object. He picked it up: it was an old greasy pocket-book, tied loosely round with a coarse string, and as Markham raised it, a letter dropped out. Richard was in the act of replacing the document in the pocket-book, which he intended to leave upon the stairs, so as to attract the notice of the inmates of the house, when the address on the outside of the letter caught his eyes. The candle nearly fell from his hand, so great was the astonishment which immediately seized upon him. That address consisted simply of the words "ANTHONY TIDKINS!"—but the handwriting—Oh! there was no possibility of mistaking _that_! Markham knew it so well; and though years had elapsed since he had last seen it, still it was familiar to him as his own—the more so, as it remained unchanged in style;—for it was the writing of his brother Eugene! With a hasty but trembling hand he opened the letter, the wafer of which had already been broken;—he did not hesitate to read the contents;—judging by his own frank and generous heart, he conceived that such a licence was permitted between brothers. Moreover, he experienced a profound and painful anxiety to ascertain what link could connect his brother with the terrible individual to whom the letter was addressed. But all that the letter contained was this:— "Come to me to-night without fail, between eleven and twelve. Knock in the usual manner." Richard examined the handwriting with the most minute attention; and the longer he scrutinized it, the more he became confirmed in his belief that it was Eugene's. But Eugene a patron or colleague of the greatest miscreant that had ever disgraced human nature! Was such a thing possible? The letter bore no date—no signature—and was addressed from no place. It had no post-mark upon it, and had, therefore, evidently been delivered by a private hand.