There, where now he saw the sea rolling between the rocky isles and the Land's End, were once green waving woods and verdant meadows, lands that were arable, mills whose busy wheels revolved in streams now passed away, and one hundred-and-forty parish churches, whose bells summoned the people to prayer, but which are all now—if we are to believe William of Worcester—submerged by the encroaching sea; yet whether gradually, or by one mighty throe of nature, on that day when the first of the line of Trevelyan swain his wonderful horse from the north-western isle, back to the rent and riven land, we know not, but so the story runs.
From, these day-dreams, such as he was seldom used to indulge in, Downie's mind rapidly reverted to practical considerations.
"Two thousand five hundred pounds in two cheques!" he muttered; "will not my bankers, and more than all, Gorbelly and Culverhole, my solicitors, wonder what singular service a creature such as this William Schotten Sharkley can possibly have rendered me, to receive so large a sum? If that drunken old soldier, Braddon, tells this story of his last meeting with Sharkley, and the subsequent loss of the papers, and permits himself to make a noise about them, may there not be many who, while remembering the former affair, by putting this and that together, will patch up a scandalous story after all? Bah—let them; there lie the proofs!" he added, glancing with a fierce and vindictive smile at the fragments of black tinder which yet fluttered in the grate.
So perished, at his remorseless hands, all the past hopes of the tender and affectionate dead, and all the present hopes of the living—of Richard and his wife who were buried so far apart—of Denzil and his sister, who were separated by fate, by peril, and so many thousand miles of land and sea!
But our story may have a sequel for all that.
CHAPTER V.
RETRIBUTION.
Greatly to the surprise of the granter, the two cheques for 500l. and 2000l. respectively, were never presented at his bankers, and Mr. Sharkley returned no more to his office; that dingy chamber of torture, with its dusty dockets, ink-spotted table, and tin charter-boxes arranged in formal rows upon an iron frame, and its damp discoloured walls, ornamented by time-tables, bills of sale, and fly-blown prospectuses, knew him never again; and days, weeks, and months rolled on, but he was never seen by human eye after the time he issued from the lodge-gate of Rhoscadzhel, and the keeper, with a contemptuous bang, clanked it behind him.
When Derrick heard of his disappearance, he felt convinced more than ever that he had abstracted his papers; but believed he had started with them to India, perhaps to make capital out of Denzil. Some who knew what the solicitor's legal course had been, thought of a dark and speedy end having befallen him; others surmised that the fear of certain trickeries, or "errors in practice," had caused him suddenly to depart for America; but all were wide of the truth.
Lord Lamorna knew not what to think, but maintained a dead and rigid silence as to his ever having had any meeting or transaction with the missing man in any way; and as many hated, and none regretted Mr. W. S. Sharkley, his existence was speedily forgotten in that district, and it was not until long after that a light was thrown on the mystery that enveloped his disappearance.