The bell rang, and with a scream the engine attached to the eleven-fifteen train for London forged slowly out of the Southampton station. Tom Durham, with an unusual expression of emotion on his face, stood upon the platform kissing his hand to Alice, who, with the tears in her eyes, leant back in the carriage and covered her face with her handkerchief. In a second-class compartment next to that which she occupied were two middle-aged, plainly-dressed men, who had been observing the parting of the half-brother and sister with some interest. "Was not that Tom Durham?" said one, as the train sped on its way. "Right you are," said the other; "I knew his face, but could not put a name to it. What is he at now--working on the square or on the cross?" "On the square, I believe," said the first; "leastways I saw him walking with Mr. Calverley in the City the other day, and he would not have been in such respectable company if he had not been all right." "I suppose not," said the other man, "for the time being; but Tom Durham is a shaky kind of customer anyways." CHAPTER II. EXIT TOM DURHAM. Mr. Durham remained watching the departing train until it had passed out of sight, when he turned round and walked quietly out of the station. The emotion he had shown--and which, to his great astonishment, he had really felt--had vanished, and left him in a deeply contemplative state. He pushed his arms half way up to his elbows in his pockets, and muttered to himself as he strode along the street; but it was not until he found himself in the sitting-room at Radley's Hotel, and had made himself a stiff glass of brandy-and-water from the bottle, duly included in the bill which Alice had paid, that he gave his feelings much vent. Then loading a short black pipe from a capacious tobacco-pouch, he seated himself at the table, and as he went through his various papers and memoranda thought aloud.