"You did not recognize him?"
"Not at all. He was a stranger to me. As I was passing, he turned and asked me whether he was going right for Whitborough. I pointed to the high-road and told him to keep straight on. Depend upon it, this was the same man."
"What could he have been looking in at my gates for?" muttered Richard. "And what--for this is of more consequence--had he been getting out of Wilks?"
"It seems rather curious altogether," remarked Dr. Rane.
"I'll find this man," said Richard, as he got up to say goodnight; "I must find him. Thank you, Rane."
But after his departure Oliver Rane did not settle to his work as before. A man, once interrupted, cannot always do so. All he did was to pace the room restlessly with bowed head, as a man in some uneasy dream. The candle burnt lower, the flame grew above the shade, throwing its light on his face, showing up its lines and angles. But it was not any brighter than when the green shade had cast over it its cadaverous hue.
"Edmund North! Edmund North!"
Did the words in all their piteous, hopeless appeal come from him? Or was it some supernatural cry in the air?