"But I never have seen its like; it had just like a painter's easel in its stomach yesterday!" "Why, it's an Echinus Larva: a sucking sea-urchin! Hang it, if I had known you hadn't seen one, I'd have brought up half-a-dozen of them!" "May I look, sir?" asked the Major; "I, too, never have seen an Echinus Larva." The bearded man looks up. "Major Campbell!" "Mr. Thurnall! I thought I could not be mistaken in the voice." "This is too pleasant, sir, to renew our watery loves together here," said Tom: but a second look at the Major's face showed him that he was in no jesting mood. "How is the party at Beddgelert? I fancied you with them still." "They are all in London, at Lord Scoutbush's house, in Eaton Square." "In London, at this dull time? I trust nothing unpleasant has brought them here." "Mrs. Vavasour is very ill. We had thoughts of sending for you, as the family physician was out of town: but she was out of danger, thank God, in a few hours. Now let me ask in turn after you. I hope no unpleasant business brings you up three hundred miles from your practice?" "Nothing, I assure you. Only I have given up my Aberalva practice. I am going to the East." "Like the rest of the world." "Not exactly. You go as a dignified soldier of her Majesty's; I as an undignified Abel Drugger, to dose Bashi-bazouks." "Impossible! and with such an opening as you had there! You must excuse me; but my opinion of your prudence must not be so rudely shaken." "Why do you not ask the question which Balzac's old Tourangeois judge asks, whenever a culprit is brought before him,--'Who is she?'" "Taking for granted that there was a woman at the bottom of every mishap? I understand you," said the Major, with a sad smile. "Now let you and me walk a little together, and look at the Echinoid another day --or when I return from Sevastopol--" Tom went out with him. A new ray of hope had crossed the Major's mind. His meeting with Thurnall might he providential; for he recollected now, for the first time, Mellot's parting hint. "You knew Elsley Vavasour well?" "No man better." "Did you think that there was any tendency to madness in him?" "No more than in any other selfish, vain, irritable man, with a strong imagination left to run riot." "Humph! you seem to have divined his character. May I ask you if you knew him before you met him at Aberalva?" Tom looked up sharply in the Major's face. "You would ask, what cause I have for inquiring? I will tell you presently. Meanwhile I may say, that Mellot told me frankly that you had some power over him; and mentioned, mysteriously, a name--John Briggs, I think--which it appears that he once assumed." "If Mellot thought fit to tell you anything, I may frankly tell you all. John Briggs is his real name. I have known him from childhood." And then Tom poured into the ears of the surprised and somewhat disgusted Major all he had to tell.