I told him that I had fully made up my mind to leave Montreal that night by the mail-train for Quebec, and to take passage in the North American, which would sail from the latter place on the following morning for England.
“If,” I said to him, “your client does not accept my terms, I will take his cheque back with me, and make a bankrupt of him—his assignees shall endorse the cheque per procuration, and the whole of the funds will then be sent to England for the benefit of his estate.”
The reply was satisfactory.
“I admit,” he said, “that the terms you propose are such as my client ought to accede to. He will be here shortly. I will inform him of your ultimatum; and if he still remains obstinate, I shall decline to have anything further to do with him. Will you call on me again at twelve o’clock?”
I kept the appointment punctually. The guilty man was there too, and quite crestfallen. Under the heavy pressure that had been brought to bear upon him he had at length given way. He accepted my terms, indorsed the cheque; and in a few hours, with a draft for the “salvage” money drawn by the City Bank of Montreal on Messrs. Glyn and Co., of London, safe in my possession, I was steaming rapidly towards Quebec.
I landed in England on Thursday, the 3rd of November.
Notwithstanding the hopelessness of my case, I had effected my “capture in Canada,” and was enabled to report the same personally at headquarters in less than five weeks from the date of my departure.
CHAPTER CLIX.
SCENE AT STOKE FERRY—LAURA STANBRIDGE LED INTO AN AMBUSCADE—A LOVE STORY TO UNWILLING EARS.
It was the nineteenth of November, and it had been a cold, gloomy day, and the night descended black and noiseless as a funeral pall upon a corpse.