“Come in, Richard,” said he, grasping his hand. “Did you meet any whom you knew?”
“I never looked at whom I met, sir,” was the reply. “I thought that if I looked at people, they might look at me, so I came straight ahead with my eyes before me. How the place has altered! There’s a new brick house on the corner where old Morgan’s shop used to stand.”
“That’s the new police station. West Lynne I assure you, is becoming grand in public buildings. And how have you been, Richard?”
“Ailing and wretched,” answered Richard Hare. “How can I be otherwise, Mr. Carlyle, with so false an accusation attached to me; and working like a slave, as I have to do?”
“You may take off the disfiguring hat, Richard. No one is here.”
Richard slowly heaved it from his brows, and his fair face, so like his mother’s, was disclosed. But the moment he was uncovered he turned shrinkingly toward the entrance door. “If any one should come in, sir?”
“Impossible!” replied Mr. Carlyle. “The front door is fast, and the office is supposed to be empty at this hour.”
“For if I should be seen and recognized, it might come to hanging, you know, sir. You are expecting that cursed Thorn here, Barbara told me.”
“Directly,” replied Mr. Carlyle, observing the mode of addressing him “sir.” It spoke plainly of the scale of society in which Richard had been mixing; that he was with those who said it habitually; nay, that he used it habitually himself. “From your description of the Lieutenant Thorn who destroyed Hallijohn, we believe this Captain Thorn to be the same man,” pursued Mr. Carlyle. “In person he appears to tally exactly; and I have ascertained that a few years ago he was a deal at Swainson, and got into some sort of scrape. He is in John Herbert’s regiment, and is here with him on a visit.”
“But what an idiot he must be to venture here!” uttered Richard. “Here of all places in the world!”