"No, sir, you are not mistaken. I am on their track."
"As you have been before, Tom?"
"That's true, sir," said Tom, with a sigh; "as I have been before."
"Can I assist you?"
"No, sir; nor any one. What I do I'll do single-handed." He wrenched himself free. "Good-night, sir."
"Only another word, Tom. Have you any message for Miss Phœbe? She told me, if I met you, to give you her love."
"Did she, sir? She's an angel of goodness. Any message, sir? Yes, this—if I don't live to accomplish what I've set my life upon, if I don't live to ask her forgiveness myself, to think of me kindly sometimes as a man who would gladly have died for her!"
He darted away, and was lost in the mist. Fred gazed thoughtfully after him, and then he rejoined Garden.
"There goes an honest, suffering man," he said; "thorough to the backbone. He has inflicted a martyrdom upon himself, and is following a will-o'-the-wisp."
But the events of the next few hours were destined to prove that Fred Cornwall was in error.