his body, every hair on his head, seemed to be cognizant that the man he hated most on earth was seated cheek by jowl with him—­that the first step in the road of retribution had been taken voluntarily by his victim himself.  The rest is soon told.  Solomon at once commenced his clumsy efforts at conciliation; and his endeavors to recommend himself to the stranger’s friendship were suffered quickly to bear fruit.  He invited him to his house in London, which, to Richard’s astonishment and indignation, he found to be his mother’s home; and, in short, fell of his own accord into the very snare which the other, had he had the fixing of it, would himself have laid for him.

And now, as we have said, when all had gone exactly as Richard would have had it go, and Solomon was being punished to the uttermost, the executor of his doom was beginning to feel, if not compunction, at all events remorse.  No adequate retribution had indeed overtaken Harry.  To have made her a widow was, in fact, to have freed her from the yoke of a harsh and unloved master; but the fact was, notwithstanding the perjury of which he believed her to have been guilty, he had never hated her as he had hated the other authors of his wrongs.  She had once on the rock-bound coast at Gethin preserved his life; she had accorded to his passion all that woman can grant, and had reciprocated it; not even in his fiercest hour of despair had he harbored the thought of raising his hand against her; he had hated her, indeed, as his betrayer, and as Solomon’s wife, but never regarded her with that burning detestation which he felt toward her husband.  There was another motive also, though he did not even admit it to himself, which, now that his chief foe was expiating his offense, had no inconsiderable weight in the scale of mercy as regarded the others.

His endeavors to win Charley’s favor had had a reflex action.  In spite of himself, a certain good-will had grown up in him toward this boy, whom his mission it was to ruin.  If there had been less of his mother in the lad’s appearance, or any thing of his father in his character, his heart might have been steeled against his youth and innocence of transgression.  As a mere son of Solomon Coe’s he would have beheld in him the whelp of a wolf, and treated him accordingly; but between the wolf and his offspring there was evidently as little of affection as there was of likeness.  The very weaknesses of Charley’s character—­his love of pleasure, his credulity, his wayward impulsiveness, of all which Balfour had made use for his own purposes—­were foreign to the nature of the elder Coe; while the lad’s high spirit, demonstrativeness, and geniality were all his own.  If he had one to guide as well as love him—­a woman with sound heart and brain, such as this Agnes Aird was represented to be, what a happy future might be before this youth!  Without such a wise counselor, how easy it would be, and how likely, for him to drift on the tide of self-will