In one of the quarries, amidst its great masses of stone, Captain Andinnian halted, his eyes fixed on the foaming sea, his thoughts most bitter. Within a few yards of him, so to say, worked his unfortunate brother; chained, a felon; all his hopes in this world blighted; all his comforts in life gone out for ever. Karl himself was peculiarly susceptible to physical discomfort, as sensitive-natured men are apt to be; and he never thought without a shudder of what Adam had to undergo in this respect.
"Subjected to endless toil; to cruel deprivation; to isolation from all his kind!" groaned Karl aloud to the wild winds. "Oh, my brother, if----"
His voice died away in very astonishment. Emerging from behind one of the blocks, at right angles with him, but not very near, came two people walking side by side, evidently conversing in close whispers. In the cloaked-up woman, with the large black bonnet and black crape veil over her face, Karl was sure he saw their servant, Ann Hopley. The other must be, he thought, one of the warders: and, unless Karl was greatly mistaken, he recognised in his strong, burly frame the same man who had come a night or two before to his mother's house. They passed on without seeing him, but he saw the man's face distinctly.
A light dawned on his mind. His mother was striving to make a friend of this warder, with a view to conveying messages, perhaps also, it might be, physical comforts, to Adam: yes, that was undoubtedly the solution of the mystery. But why need she have hidden it from him, Karl?
When he got home that night--for he stayed out until he was tired and weary--Ann Hopley, in her usual home attire, was putting the tea-tray on the table.
"I fancied I saw Ann out to-day," he observed to his mother, when they were alone.
"She went out on an errand for me," replied Mrs. Andinnian.
"I have been over to the Island," continued Karl. "It was there I thought I saw her."
Mrs. Andinnian was pouring some cream into the tea-cups when he spoke. She put down the small frail glass jug with a force that smashed it, and the cream ran over the tea-board.
"You have been to the Island!" she cried in a voice that betrayed some dreadful terror. "To the Island?"