Fortune had favoured him up to this. Would Fortune be his friend still further? Was it too much to hope that another great piece of good luck might await him? There was one sure way out of all his danger and difficulties, if he had only been a single man: there was Maud. If, when Sir Alexander died, he were a bachelor, he might marry Maud. She knew nothing of the world, and he knew she liked him. There would be no need for his ruin if he were only a bachelor. It was beyond the power of Fate to make him a bachelor; but suppose Fate should take away that unloved wife, that great danger to his name, that great stumbling-block in the way of his successful progress? _Then?_ What then? Answer: He should marry Maud, and so wipe out the history of his crime. Would chance or accident, would Heaven or Hell, or whatever else he might call it, take away from him this woman who was a curse and burden, and give him that woman who would bring him deliverance? Such thoughts had long haunted his mind before he had heard on that 17th of August the voices which assailed and tempted him in tremendous tones; that day on which the fate of the steamboat _Rodwell_ and of Beatrice his wife, of the Weird Sisters and the Towers of Silence, became sealed together for ever. CHAPTER IX. A FLASK OF COGNAC. When the Weeslade Valley Bank declined to advance five thousand pounds on the Weeslade Steamship Company's river passenger-boat the _Rodwell_, they had two reasons for the refusal: first, they were not prepared to lock up money at the time; second, a report reached them that the _Rodwell_ was in bad condition. In the winter of the year 1865 the _Rodwell_ had lain up, undergoing repairs, and then the discovery was made that her condition was far from satisfactory. Many of her plates were no thicker than brown-paper, and just at the bends aft the point of a scraper had absolutely gone through a plate. The boilers, too, were found to be in an unsatisfactory condition, and the machinery needed thorough overhauling. But they wanted the boat for the summer traffic, and had no time to get all she required done before the fine weather; so she was patched for the time, the intention being to lay her up the following autumn and put her in good repair; in the meantime one new boiler was to be made for her. Towards the middle of April she began running as usual with passengers between Daneford and Seacliff. On her third trip she broke down; something went wrong with her machinery, and she had to be towed into Seacliff by another steamer. As this accident occurred early in the season there were few passengers, and little excitement arose from the circumstance.