“You might be your father sitting there and talking! It’s exactly what he would have said. My dear fellow your ideals are above me, and they are about as little likely to be adopted by ordinary men of the world as the ideals in Plato’s republic. I shall certainly not give myself up. I shall instead try my very best, for the sake of others, to recoup my losses and to start afresh.” A curiously sanguine look crept over his worn face, and Ralph felt certain that like a gambler he would return as soon as possible to his great game of speculation, very likely persuading himself, with the ease of one who has posed hypocritically for many years, that he did it all from the purest philanthropic motives. “You had better not come on board with me,” he said as they drew near to the docks. “And on the whole perhaps I had better not take this tartan with me, it is too marked. I will bequeath it to you. Good-bye Ralph. Many thanks to you for what you have done for me.” With the first hearty grip of the hand he had ever given his godson he bade him farewell and passing up the gangway on board the steamer disappeared from view. The cold wintry wind came sweeping over the water; Ralph shivered and was glad enough to wrap the highland maud about him as he paced up and down watching to see the actual start of the Havre boat. There was a bustle of arrival as the passengers were transferred from the boat train; he stood in the shadow watching them, and apparently another man, unobtrusively dressed, was engaged in the same occupation. Ralph felt sure that the fellow was a detective; he folded the plaid more closely about his mouth and pulled his hat over his eyes; the man furtively glanced at him and drew a few steps nearer, whereupon the spirit of mischief and love of acting overcame all other recollections, and Ralph as though most desirous of eluding pursuit, slipped quietly away into the darkness and vanished in the crowd. The detective, with all his suspicions aroused, gave chase, but presently coming to a place where two streets branched off, was baffled for a moment. In a deep porch of one of the houses close by, a young man stood bareheaded, sheltering a flickering fusee with his hat while he tried to light his pipe. “Seen a man wrapped in a plaid go by this way?” asked the detective panting. “He has not gone past here,” said Ralph coolly. The man took the other street and just at that moment the sounding of a steam whistle and the chiming of a clock in a neighbouring house told Ralph that it was a quarter to twelve and that the boat for Havre was safely underweigh. He quietly picked up the highland maud from the well shaded corner of the porch where it had been snugly tucked behind a pillar, and then walked back to Portland Street musing over Sir Matthew’s fate and wondering what news the morning would bring. CHAPTER XXX “O, gear will buy me rigs o’ land, And gear will buy me sheep and kye;