“I’ll go and see if I can find him,” quoth the Doctor.

“Bother you,” said Mark, “always running out o’ nights after somebody else’s business, instead of having a jolly evening.  You stay, Tom, like a sensible fellow, and tell me and Mary some more travellers’ lies.  Had much sporting, boy?”

“Hum!  I’ve shot and hunted every beast, I think, shootable and huntable, from a humming-bird to an elephant; and I had some splendid fishing in Canada; but, after all, give me a Whitbury trout, on a single-handed Chevalier.  We’ll at them to-morrow, Mr. Armsworth.”

“We will, my boy! never so many fish in the river as this year, or in season so early.”

The good Doctor returned; but with no news which could throw light on the history of the now mysterious Mr. John Briggs.  He had locked himself into the room with his father’s corpse, evidently in great excitement and grief; spent several hours in walking up and down there alone; and had then gone to an attorney in the town, and settled everything about the funeral “in the handsomest way,” said the man of law; “and was quite the gentleman in his manner, but not much of a man of business; never had even thought of looking for his father’s will; and was quite surprised when I told him that there ought to be a fair sum—­eight hundred or a thousand, perhaps, to come in to him, if the stock and business were properly disposed of.  So he went off to London by the evening mail, and told me to address him to the post-office in some street off the Strand.  Queer business, sir, isn’t it?”

John Briggs did not reappear till a few minutes before his father’s funeral, witnessed the ceremony evidently with great sorrow, bowed off silently all who attempted to speak to him, and returned to London by the next coach—­leaving matter for much babble among all Whitbury gossips.  One thing at least was plain, that he wished to be forgotten in his native town; and forgotten he was, in due course of time.

Tom Thurnall stayed his month at home, and then went to America; whence he wrote home, in about six months, a letter, of which only one paragraph need interest us,

“Tell Mark I have no need for his dollars.  I have done the deed; and, thanks to the underground railway, done it nearly gratis; which was both cheaper than buying her, and infinitely better for me; so that she has all poor Wyse’s dollars to start with afresh in Canada.  I write this from New York.  I could accompany her no farther; for I must get back to the South in time for the Mexican expedition.”

Then came a long and anxious silence; and then a letter, not from Mexico but from California,—­one out of several which had been posted; and then letters, more regularly from Australia.  Sickened with Californian life, he had crossed the Pacific once more, and was hard at work in the diggings, doctoring and gold-finding by turns.

“A rolling stone gathers no moss,” said his father.