“Harry Vine? Not yet. Only that he has escaped somewhere, I hope, for good.”
“Yes, sir, I hope so too—for good.”
Volume Three—Chapter Twenty Four.
Tried in the Fire.
After, as it were, a race for life, the breathless competitors seemed to welcome the restful change, and the sleep that came almost unalloyed by the mental pangs which had left their marks upon the brows of young and old. And swift tides came and went with the calms and storms of the western coast, but somehow all seemed to tell of rest and peace.
It was a year after Victor Pradelle had been placed in what Sergeant Parkins facetiously termed one of her Majesty’s boarding-schools, under a good master, that John Van Heldre wrote the following brief letter in answer to one that was very long, dated a month previous to the response, and bearing the post-mark of the Straits Settlements:—
“Harry Vine,—I quite appreciate what you say regarding your long silence. I am too old a man to believe in a hasty repentance forced on by circumstances. Hence, I say, you have done wisely in waiting a year before writing as fully as you have. George and Luke Vine have always been to me as brothers. You know how I felt toward their son. I say to him now, you are acting wisely, and I am glad that you have met such a friend as Richard Leslie.
“Certainly: stay where you are, though there is nothing to fear now from the law, I guarantee that. The years soon roll by. I say this for all our sakes.