This is a fair sample of many days and nights spent by young Harcourt. He allowed himself no indulgences, not even a newspaper, so he never saw the advertisements for himself, nor, if he had, could he have answered them.
He determined that at the end of one month he would write to his mother, or go to see her. He thought that for one month she would be living in comfort, and even in luxury, at Goblin Hall, and that she would excuse his silence in his supposed honeymoon at the Isle of Storms. His honeymoon! Oh! Father of Mercies! was ever mortal man wounded as he was? His mother would be in blissful ignorance of his real position. There would be no one to tell her. Hanson would not, and Roma could not. Roma would be Hanson’s closely watched prisoner until he should have won her love or conquered her into submission, and then he would take her on his yacht to Europe.
Oh, the infernal thought! And the traitor who had betrayed her to this captivity! Why did not some thunderbolt from heaven fall upon his accursed head? He could not think of Roma’s condition and keep his senses. He fled the subject.
He would write to his mother, or visit her at the end of the month, and he would explain, or not, as circumstances should seem to indicate.
Such was his resolution.
But before the month ended a catastrophe prevented the execution of his plans.
When the work of tearing down and clearing away the old Rue Street tenement houses was finished Harcourt, still following in the wake of his friend, Adler, got employment in the upper part of the city, where a large number of men were at work blasting rock.
He had been engaged with that gang about a week, when, at an explosion, a piece of rock struck him on the side, breaking three of his ribs and knocking him down senseless from the nervous shock.
No one knew him there but Adler, who instantly identified him.
He was carried to the nearest hospital and entered under the name of William Williams. He was supposed to be, and reported to be, a native of South Wales, his complexion and his general appearance favoring that theory.