"He introduced himself to me," I answered, "but Miss Grey has not seen him." Something seemed to weigh heavily upon his mind. "What is your father's present address?" he asked. I told him, and he made a note of it in his pocket-book. He stood up now, and did at length take his leave. "I am going to ask you to do a very kind thing. You have heard of sealed orders, not to be opened till a certain point has been reached in a voyage or a march? Will you promise, until I shall have left you fully five minutes, not to open this letter?" I almost thought he was jesting, but I perceived very quickly that he was perfectly serious. Laura Grey looked at him curiously, and gave him the desired promise as she received the note. His carriage was at the door, and in another minute he was driving rapidly down the avenue. What had led to these odd precautions?--and what had they to do with the shipwrecked stranger? At about eleven o'clock--that is to say, about ten minutes before Mr. Carmel's visit to us--the stranger had been lying on a sofa in his quarters, with two ancient and battered novels from Austin's Library in Cardyllion, when the door opened unceremoniously, and Mr. Carmel, in travelling costume, stepped into the room. The hall-door was standing open, and Mr. Carmel, on alighting from his conveyance, had walked straight in without encountering any one in the hall. On seeing an intruder in possession he stopped short; the gentleman on the sofa, interrupted, turned towards the door. Thus confronted, each stared at the other. "Ha! Marston," exclaimed the ecclesiastic, with a startled frown, and an almost incredulous stare. "Edwyn! by Jove!" responded the stranger, with a rather anxious smile, which faded, however, in a moment. "What on earth brings you here?" said Mr. Carmel, sternly, after a silence of some seconds. "What the devil brings you here?" inquired the stranger, almost at the same moment. "Who sent you? What is the meaning of it?" Mr. Carmel did not approach him. He stood where he had first seen him, and his looks darkened. "You are the last man living I should have looked for here," said he. "I suppose we shall find out what we mean by-and-by," said Marston, cynically; "at present I can only tell you that when I saw you I honestly thought a certain old gentleman, I don't mean the devil, had sent you in search of me." Carmel looked hard at him. "I've grown a very dull man since I last saw you, and I don't understand a joke as well as I once did," said he; "but if you are serious you cannot have learnt that this house has been lent to me by Mr. Ware, its owner, for some months at least; and these, I suppose, are your things? There is not room to put you up here." "I didn't want to come. I am the famous man you may have read of in the papers--quite unique--the man who escaped alive from the Conway Castle. No Christian refuses shelter to the shipwrecked; and you are a Christian, though an odd one."