“I am constantly on the move, am travelling, but if you want to communicate with me, address a letter to the post-office, Sheffield, and it will be sure to reach me.”
“You’re a good fellow. There’s no house near where we can have a parting glass? Just one, you know, to show there’s no animosity.”
“There is no house near, and so think of what I have said, and farewell till we meet again.”
“Good bye, Peace, and good luck attend you,” said Bristow, shaking his companion by the hand, and so the two parted.
Peace proceeded with his picture frames towards the house of his customer, and John Bristow went in the opposite direction.
“Strange, remarkably strange, my meeting with that man,” he murmured, as he walked along. “And so he knows no more about Bessie and his wife than I do myself. It is altogether most mysterious and incomprehensible, but there’s something in the background which has not yet come to light.”
After delivering his frames he returned to his workshop, where he was occupied for an hour or two. He then sought the hospitable parlour of the “Carved Lion.”
On the following morning, while he was at breakfast in the club-room, Brickett came in and said with much concern—
“This is a sad business at Saltwich.”
“What is that?” inquired Peace, looking up from his smoking and fragrant cup of coffee.