Buckland saw his agitation.
"No bad news, I trust."
"I had an enemy, and he is dead. You shall know more of it to-morrow."
And hastening from the house, he mounted again, and through the midst of mules, donkeys, dromedaries, men, children, and old women, rode at an unlawful speed towards his lodging.
Here, with a beating heart, he explored his profuse correspondence from beginning to end. By the Calcutta packet, he learned how his native town had been thrown into commotion by the exposure and flight of Vinal, and how his friends were eager and impatient to hear his explanation of the affair. The more recent letters bore tidings still more startling. The bark Swallow had touched at Gibraltar, and a letter from her captain to her owners, forwarded by the Oriental steamer on her return voyage, told how his passenger, John White, had been lost overboard during a gale, two of the crew having seen the accident; how, arriving at Gibraltar, his trunks had been opened in the consul's presence, to learn his address; and how, along with a large amount of money in gold, letters and papers had been found, showing that he was not John White, but Horace Vinal, of Boston.
* * * * *
On the next morning, Morton despatched a letter to Meredith. In it, he told his friend the whole course of his story; and these were the closing words:—
"One thing you may well believe—that, before you will have had this letter many days, I shall follow it. There will be no rest for me till I touch American soil. An old passion, only half stifled under a load of hopelessness, springs into fresh life again, and burns, less brightly, perhaps, but I can almost believe, more deeply and fervently than ever. I was consoling myself yesterday with trying to think that blows were my mind's best medicine; but I feel now, that after being broken with the plough and harrow, it will yield the better for the summer sunshine. Yet I am afraid to flatter myself with too bright a prospect. Miss Leslie loved me, and the planets in their course are not more constant and unswerving; but I cannot tell what may have been the effect of so much suffering, or what determination, fatal to my hope, it may not have impelled her to embrace. She will soon know my mind. I have written to her, and begged her to send her reply to New York, where, if my reckoning does not fail, I shall arrive about the middle of June. By it I shall be able to judge to what fortune I am to look forward.
"You have so lately passed your own anxieties, that you will easily appreciate mine. I can wish for them nothing more than that they may find as happy an issue; and I will take it as an earnest of the intentions of destiny towards me that it has just brought together my two best friends."