near the route of regular emigration, as soon as he had gained a sufficient sum he embarked with some goods to Callao, where he presently established himself in business, resuming his real name—­the unambitious but indistinctive one of “Smith.”  It is highly probable that this prudential act was also his first step towards rectitude.  For whether the change was a question of moral ethics, or merely a superstitious essay in luck, he was thereafter strictly honest in business.  He became prosperous.  He had been sustained in his flight by the intention that, if he were successful elsewhere, he would endeavor to communicate with his abandoned fiancee, and ask her to join him, and share not his name but fortune in exile.  But as he grew rich, the difficulties of carrying out this intention became more apparent; he was by no means certain of her loyalty surviving the deceit he had practiced and the revelation he would have to make; he was doubtful of the success of any story which at other times he would have glibly invented to take the place of truth.  Already several months had elapsed since his supposed death; could he expect her to be less accessible to premature advances now than when she had been a widow?  Perhaps this made him think of the wife he had deserted so long ago.  He had been quite content to live without regret or affection, forgetting and forgotten, but in his present prosperity he felt there was some need of putting his domestic affairs into a more secure and legitimate shape, to avert any catastrophe like the last.  Here at least would be no difficulty; husbands had deserted their wives before this in Californian emigration, and had been heard of only after they had made their fortune.  Any plausible story would be accepted by her in the joy of his reappearance; or if, indeed, as he reflected with equal complacency, she was dead or divorced from him through his desertion—­a sufficient cause in her own State—­and re-married, he would at least be more secure.  He began, without committing himself, by inquiry and anonymous correspondence.  His wife, he learnt, had left Missouri for Sacramento only a month or two after his own disappearance from that place, and her address was unknown!

A complication so unlooked for disquieted him, and yet whetted his curiosity.  The only person she might meet in California who could possibly identify him with the late Mr. Farendell was Duffy; he had often wondered if that mysterious partner of Scranton’s had been deceived with the others, or had ever suspected that the body discovered in the counting-house was Scranton’s.  If not, he must have accepted the strange coincidence that Scranton had disappeared also the same night.  In the first six months of his exile he had searched the Californian papers thoroughly, but had found no record of any doubt having been thrown on the accepted belief.  It was these circumstances, and perhaps a vague fascination not unlike that which impels the malefactor to haunt the scene of his crime, that, at the end of four years, had brought him, a man of middle age and assured occupation and fortune, back to the city he had fled from.