"Karlo, old man, you were always one of the anxious ones. I am content to leave problems alone until they arise. It is the best way."
"Sometimes it may be; not always. Of course all these thoughts turn round to one point, Adam--the urgent expediency there exists for your quitting the Maze."
"And I am not going to quit it."
"The advance of those people on Saturday night; the studied tramp, as I thought it, of policemen, gave me a fright, Adam. Let us suppose such a thing for a moment as that they were coming after you! No earthly aid could have shielded you."
"But they were not coming after me, you see; they were but carrying some poor dead man to his home on my estate. The same fear may apply wherever I go."
"No, it could not. It could apply to nowhere as it does to here. In some place abroad, Adam, you would be comparatively secure and safe. I am convinced that this locality is, of all, the most dangerous."
"If I were already at the same place you mention, wherever that may be--an inaccessible island in the icy seas, say--I should undoubtedly be more out of the reach of English constables and warders than I am now: but as matters stand, Karl, I am safer here, because the danger to me would lie in getting away. I shall not attempt to do it."
Karl paused for a few minutes before he resumed. His brother, sitting near the shaded lamp, was turning over the pages of the "Art Journal," a copy of which Mrs. Grey had brought from London.
"How came you to know Smith, Adam?"
"How came I to know Smith!" repeated Sir Adam. "To tell you the truth, Karl, Smith saved me. But for his sheltering me in the time you know of, I should not be at liberty now; probably not in life. Until then he was a stranger."