"Major Campbell's wish is a command. Where have you searched for him?"
"At his address, at his publisher's, at the houses of various literary friends of his, and yet no trace."
"Has he gone to the Continent?"
"Heaven knows! I have inquired at every passport office for news of any one answering his description; indeed, I have two detectives, I may tell you, at this moment, watching every possible place. There is but one hope, if he be alive. Can he have gone home to his native town?"
"Never! Anywhere but there."
"Is there any old friend of the lower class with whom he may have taken lodgings?"
Tom pondered.
"There was a fellow, a noisy blackguard, whom Briggs was asking after this very summer—a fellow who went off from Whitbury with some players. I know Briggs used to go to the theatre with him as a boy—what was his name? He tried acting, but did not succeed; and then became a scene-shifter, or something of the kind, at the Adelphi. He has some complaint, I forget what, which made him an out-patient at St. Mumpsimus's, some months every year. I know that he was there this summer, for I wrote to ask, at Briggs's request, and Briggs sent him a sovereign through me."
"But what makes you fancy that he can have taken shelter with such a man, and one who knows his secret?"
"It is but a chance: but he may have done it from the mere feeling of loneliness—just to hold by some one whom he knows in this great wilderness; especially a man in whose eyes he will be a great man, and to whom he has done a kindness; still, it is the merest chance."