“Thank Heaven for that, as your confinement here promises to be of very short duration.  However, the limited time makes it the more necessary for me to act with the greater promptitude.  I came here with the full intention of remaining in town as long as you should be detained in this infernal place, but I shall have to leave you within the hour.”

“Of course, Cloudy, my dear boy, I could not expect you to restrict yourself to this town so soon after escaping from the confinement of your ship!”

“Oh! you don’t understand me at all!  Do you think I am going away on my own business, or amusement, while you are here?  To the devil with the thought!—­begging your reverence’s pardon.  No, I am going in search of Jacquelina.  Since hearing your explanation, particularly that part of it relating to your visit to Luckenough, upon the morning of the day of Marian’s death, and the various scenes that occurred there—­certain vague ideas of my own have taken form and color, and I feel convinced that Jacquelina could throw some light upon this affair.”

“Indeed! why should you think so?”

“Oh! from many small indexes, which I have neither the time nor inclination to tell you; for, taken apart from collateral circumstances and associations, they would appear visionary.  Each in itself is really trivial enough, but in the mass they are very indicative.  At least, I think so, and I must seek Jacquelina out immediately.  And to do so, Thurston, I must leave you this moment, for there is a boat to leave the wharf for Baltimore this morning if it has not already gone.  It will take me two days to reach Baltimore, another day to get to her convent, and it will altogether be five or six days before I can get back here.  Good-by, Thurston!  Heaven keep you, and give you a speedy deliverance from this black hole!”

And Cloudy threw his arms around Thurston in a brotherly embrace, and then knocked at the door to be let out.

In half an hour Cloudy was “once more upon the waters,” in full sail for Baltimore.

CHAPTER XXXV.

MARIAN.

Great was the consternation caused by the arrest of a gentleman so high in social rank and scholastic and theological reputation as the Rev. Thurston Willcoxen, and upon a charge, too, so awful as that for which he stood committed!  It was the one all-absorbing subject of thought and conversation.  People neglected their business, forgetting to work, to bargain, buy or sell.  Village shopkeepers, instead of vamping their wares, leaned eagerly over their counters, and with great dilated eyes and dogmatical forefingers, discussed with customers the merits or demerits of the great case.  Village mechanics, occupied solely with the subject of the pastor’s guilt or innocence, disappointed with impunity customers who were themselves too deeply interested and too highly excited by the same subject, to remember, far less to rebuke them, for unfulfilled engagements.  Even women totally neglected, or badly fulfilled, their domestic avocations; for who in the parish could sit down quietly to the construction of a garment or a pudding while their beloved pastor, the “all praised” Thurston Willcoxen, lay in prison awaiting his trial for a capital crime?