Just then they met a fisherman, who gazed at them, wondering what the two gentlemen were doing out walking at that hour; but concluding that, after the mad fashion of Englishmen, they had been to bathe, he passed them with a civil “Bonjour.” Ernest coloured to the eyes under the scrutiny; he was beginning to feel the dreadful burden of his secret. Presently they reached the steamer, and found Mr. Alston’s little boy Roger, who, though he was only nine years old, was as quick and self-reliant as many English lads of fourteen, waiting for them by the bridge. “O, here you are, father; you have been walking so long that I thought you would miss the boat. I have brought the luggage down all right, and this gentleman’s too.” “That’s right, my lad. Kershaw, do you go and take the tickets; I want to get rid of this;” and he tapped the revolver-case, that was concealed beneath his coat. Ernest did so, and presently met Mr. Alston on the boat. A few minutes more and, to his intense relief, she cast off and stood out to sea. There were not very many passengers on board, and those there were, were too much taken up in making preparations to be sea-sick to take any notice of Ernest. And yet he could not shake himself free from the idea that everybody knew that he had just killed a man. His own self-consciousness was so intense that he saw his guilt reflected on the faces of all he met. He gazed around him in awe, expecting every moment to be greeted as a murderer. Most people who have ever done anything they should not are acquainted with this sensation. Overcome with this idea, he took refuge in his berth, nor did he emerge therefrom till the boat reached Weymouth. There both he and Mr. Alston bought some rough clothes, and, to a great extent, succeeded in disguising themselves; then made their way across country to Southampton in the same trains, but in separate compartments. Reaching Southampton without let or hindrance, they agreed to take passages in the Union Company’s R.M.S. _Moor,_ sailing on the following morning. Mr. Alston obtained a list of the passengers; fortunately, there was nobody among them whom he knew. For greater security, however, they took steerage passages, and booked themselves under assumed names. Ernest took his second Christian name, and figured on the passenger list as E. Beyton, while Mr. Alston and his boy assumed the name of James. They took their passages at different times, and feigned to be unknown to each other. These precautions they found to be doubly necessary, inasmuch as at Southampton Mr. Alston managed to get hold of a book on English criminal law, from which it appeared that the fact of the duel having been fought at Guernsey did not in the least clear them from the legal consequences of the act, as they had vaguely supposed would be the case, on the insufficient authority of Captain Justice’s statement.