Was it present happiness, or a solemn foreboding of future woe, that filled his soul with pious thoughts?
Morley himself could not tell. He thought of the future; and none can foresee what is in the womb of Time.
To be separated from Ethel—ah! there was no chance of that now; but Hawkshaw—the cunning and hateful Cramply Hawkshaw—for some brief space would hover about her still!
What of that? The broad waters of the mighty sea on which he looked, and whose breakers boiled against the rocks four hundred feet below him—the sea from which a red moon, round and vast as a chariot-wheel, was rising—would be around him and Ethel, and this man Hawkshaw would be left behind.
While these thoughts occurred to Morley, he opened his portemonnaie, and drew forth the ring he had promised to return.
At that moment Hawkshaw, who was seated behind him, crept near, with a visage pale, damp, and distorted by malevolence, and with a fiendish glare in his eye.
* * * * *
About an hour after this, the captain was seen leisurely proceeding along the road to Laurel Lodge.
He was alone!