What with the past recollection, what with his brother's near presence, what with the approach of these police--as he took them to be--what with the apprehension ever overlying his heart, Karl was seized with a panic of terror. Were they coming in search of Adam? He thought so: and all the agony that he often went over in his dreams, he suffered now in waking reality. The hubbub of exposure; the public disgrace; the renewed hard life for him at Portland Island; even perhaps--Karl's imagination was vivid just then--the scaffold in the distance as an ending! These visions surging through his brain, Karl flew to the other side of the road--lest his being on the side of the Maze might bring suspicion on it--and then walked quietly to his own entrance gates. There he stood, and turned to await the event, his head beating, his pulses leaping. With a relief that no tongue could express, Karl saw them pass the Maze and come onwards. Presently, in the night's imperfect light, he distinguished a kind of covered stretcher, or hand-barrow, borne by a policeman and other men, a small mob following. "Is anything amiss!" he asked, taking a few steps into the road, and speaking in the quietest tones he could just then command. "It's poor Whittle, Sir Karl," replied the policeman--who knew him. There were a few scattered cottages skirting the wood beyond the Court, and Karl recognized the name, Whittle, as that of a man who lived in one of them and worked at the railway-station. "Is he ill?" asked Karl. "He is dead, Sir Karl. He was missed from his work in the middle of the afternoon and not found till an hour ago: there he was, stretched out in the field, dead. We got Mr. Moore round, and he thinks it must have been a sun-stroke." "What a sad thing!" cried Karl, in his pitying accents. "Does his wife know?" "We've sent on to prepare her, poor woman! There's four or five little children, Sir Karl, more's the pity!" "Ay; I know there are some. Tell her I will come in and see her in the morning." A murmur of approbation at the last words arose from the bystanders. It seemed to them an earnest that the new baronet, Sir Karl, would turn out to be a kind and considerate man; as good for them perhaps as Sir Joseph had been. He listened to the tramp, tramp, until it had died away, and then turned in home with all his trouble and care: determined to search the newspapers--filed by Sir Joseph--before he went to rest, for some particulars of this Philip Salter. "Oh that Adam were but safe in some less dangerous land!" was the refrain, ever eating itself into his brain. CHAPTER XIX. In the same Train. "You must step out sharp, Sir Karl. The train is on the move."