He little knew how often he was accompanied after this by a shadow more than his own. Once or twice, thinking he was being watched, he had turned round suddenly in the London streets to see a figure disappear as suddenly in some dark entry, or round an adjacent corner. He thought this was fancy at first; but finally beginning to fear, he armed himself. He had never thought of Shuffleton Gibbs at these times. A superstitious dread took possession of him at the outset, thoughts of his dead father haunted him, and occasionally sent him home hot, and feverish, and nervous. Latterly he rarely went out on foot; but still a mysterious figure occasionally flitted by as he alighted from his carriage. Sometimes it seemed as if an arm were upraised. That same figure would stand now and then in front of the great house where Mr. Tallant resided, and contemplate the lighted windows, and then disappear by crooked unfrequented ways, up dark alleys, along neglected streets, away city-wards, until it entered a dirty gin-shop or some wretched lodging-house, where it would assume the appearance of Shuffleton Gibbs, but sufficiently changed in feature to render disguise unnecessary. Weird, restless, sunken eyes, sharp features, a nervous twitching of the mouth, and a continual watchfulness, like that of a man charged with some desperate mission of blood; it was a miserable wreck tossed about on the dark sea of criminal London without sail or rudder, bound for no port, without a name, without papers; and yet with a compass pointing its trembling finger unerringly in one direction, where the signal lights burnt red and murky on a dark and dreadful shore. CHAPTER IX. GLANCES AT WILLIAMSON’S STORY, AND TERMINATES PAUL SOMERTON’S ADVENTURE. It came at last, that story of Williamson’s life; it came in a heavy letter franked with foreign postage-stamps; and Paul Somerton read it with hot curiosity. There was nothing particularly new or startling in the narration. It was the old old story of sin and sorrow, with perhaps darker hues of melancholy in it, here and there, than usual.