"Enough for what, dear?"

"Enough to tempt poor Mr. Trover. We shall never see more of him."

"Do you really think so?"

"I am certain of it. He was thinking of nothing else than how to make his escape all the time we were crossing the lake, and I, too, had no more pressing anxiety than how to get rid of him. Had I offered him a certain sum, we should have had him for a pensioner as long as he lived, but by making him steal the money I force him to be his own security that he 'll never come back again. It was for this that I persisted in acting on his fears in the boat; the more wretched we made him the cheaper he became, and when he heaved that last heavy sigh, I took ten Napoleons off his price."

Holmes had to stop walking, and hold his hands to his sides with laughter. The device seemed to him about the best practical joke he had ever heard of. Then ceasing suddenly, he said,--

"But what if he were to go back to the others, Loo, and turn approver against us?"

"We are safe enough on that score. He has nothing to tell them that they do not know already. They have got to the bottom of all the mystery, and they don't want him."

"Still it seems to me, Loo, that it might have been safer to keep him along with us,--under our eye, as it were."

"Not at all, papa. It is as in a shipwreck, where the plank that will save two will sink with three. The stratagem that will rescue _us_ would be probably marred by _him_, and, besides, he'll provide for his own safety better than we should."

Thus talking, they entered the little village, where, although not yet daybreak, a small _cafe_ was open,--one of those humble refreshment-houses frequented by peasants on their way to their daily toil.

"Let us breakfast here," said she, "while they are getting ready some light carriage to carry us on to St. Grail. I have an old friend there, the prior of the monastery, who used to be very desirous to convert me long ago. I intend to give him a week or ten days' trial now, papa; and he may also, if he feel so disposed, experiment upon _you_."

It was in this easy chit-chat they sat down to their coffee in the little inn at Rorschach. They were soon, however, on the road again, sealed in a little country carriage drawn by a stout mountain pony.

"Strange enough all this adventure seems," said she, as they ascended the steep mountain on foot, to relieve the weary beast. "Sometimes it appears all like a dream to me, and now, when I look over the lake there, and see the distant spires of Bregenz yonder, I begin to believe that there is reality in it, and that we are acting in a true drama."

Holmes paid but little attention to her words, wrapped up as he was in some details he was reading in a newspaper he had carried away from the _Cafe_.

"What have you found to interest you so much there, papa?" asked she, at last.

Still he made no reply, but read on.

"It can scarcely be that you are grown a politician again," continued she, laughingly, "and pretend to care for Austria or for Italy."

"This is all about Paten," said he, eagerly. "There's the whole account of it."

"Account of what?" cried she, trying to snatch the paper from him.

"Of his death."

"His death! Is he dead? Is Paten dead?" She had to clutch his arm as she spoke to support herself, and it was only with the greatest difficulty that she kept her feet. "How was it? Tell me how he came by his death. Was it O'Shea?"

"No, he was killed. The man who did it has given himself up, alleging that it was in an altercation between them; a pistol, aimed at his own breast, discharged its contents in Paten's."

She tore the paper from his hand, and, tottering over to a bank on the roadside, bent down to read it. Holmes continued to talk over the event and all the details, but she did not hear what he said. She had but senses for the lines she was perusing.

"I thought at first it was O'Shea in some disguise. But it cannot be; for see, they remark here that this man has been observed loitering about Baden ever since Paten arrived. Oh, here's the mystery," cried she. "His name is Collier."

"That was an old debt between them," said Holmes.

"I hope there will be no discovery as to Paten's real name. It would so certainly revive the old scandal."

"We can scarcely expect such good luck as that, Loo. There is but one thing to do, dear; we must put the sea between us and our calumniators."

"How did O'Shea come by the letters if he had no hand in it?"

"Perhaps he had; perhaps it was a concerted thing; perhaps he bought up the letters from Collier afterwards. Is it of the least consequence to us how he got them?"

"Yes, Collier might have read them," said she, in a hollow voice; and as Holmes, startled by the tones, turned round, he saw that she had a sickening faintness over her, and that she trembled violently.

"Where's your old courage, Loo?" said he, cheeringly. "Paten is gone, Collier has a good chance of being sent after him, and here we are, almost the only actors left of the whole drama."

"That's true, papa, very true; and as we shall have to play in the afterpiece, the sooner we get the tragedy out of our heads the better."

They remounted the carriage, and went on their way. There, where the beech-trees bend across the road, it is there they have just disappeared! The brisk tramp of the pony can be heard even yet; it grows fainter and fainter, and only the light train of dust now marks their passage. They are gone; and we are to see them no more!

CHAPTER VIII. CONSULTATION

Every host has had some experience of the fact that there are guests of whom he takes leave at the drawing-room door, and others who require that he should accompany them to the very frontier of his kingdom, and only part with as they step into their carriage. The characters of a story represent each of these classes. Some make their exit quietly, unobtrusively; they slip away with a little gesture of the hand, or a mere look to say adieu. Others arise with a pretentious dignity from their places, and, in the ruffle of their voluminous plumage, seem to say, "When we spread out our wings for flight, the small birds may flutter away to their nests." It is needless that we should tell our readers that we have reached that critical moment. The dull roll of carriages to the door, and the clank of the let-down steps tell that the hour of departure has arrived, and that the entertainer will very soon be left all alone, without "One of Them."

As in the real world, no greater solecism can be committed than to beg the uprising guest to reseat himself, nor is there any measure more certain of disastrous failure; so in fiction, when there is a move in the company, the sooner they all go the better.

While I am painfully impressed with this fact,--while I know and feel that my last words must be very like the leave-takings of that tiresome button-holder who, great-coated and muffled himself, will yet like to detain you in the cold current of a doorway,--I am yet sensible of the deference due to those who have indulgently accompanied me through my story, and would desire to leave no questions unanswered with regard to those who have figured before him.

Mr. Trover, having overheard the dialogue which had such an intimate bearing on his own fortunes, lost no time, as we have seen, in quitting the hotel at Bregenz; and although Winthrop expected to see him at dinner, he was not surprised to hear that he had left a message to say he had gone over to the cottage to dine with Mrs. Hawke. It was with an evident sense of relief that the honest American learned this fact.

There was something too repulsive to his nature in the thought of sitting down at the same table in apparent good fellowship with the man whom he knew to be a villain, and whose villany a very few hours would expose to the world; but what was to be done? Quackinboss had insisted on the point; he had made him give a solemn pledge to make no change in his manner towards Trover till such tine as the Laytons had returned with full and incontestable proofs of his guilt.

"We'll spoil everything, sir," said Quackinboss, "if we harpoon him in deep water. We must go cautiously to work, and drive him up, gradually, towards the shallows, where, if one miss, another can strike him."

Winthrop was well pleased to hear that the "chase" was at least deferred, and that he was to dine _tete-a-tete_ with his true-hearted countryman.

Hour after hour went over, and in their eager discussion of the complicated intrigue they had unravelled, they lost all recollection of Trover or his absence. It was the character of the woman which absorbed their entire thoughts; and while Winthrop quoted her letters, so full of beautiful sentiments, so elevated, and so refined, Quackinboss related many little traits of her captivating manner and winning address.

"It's all the same in natur', sir," said he, summing up. "Where will you see prettier berries than on the deadly nightshade? and do you think that they was made to look so temptin' for nothing? Or wasn't it jest for a lesson to us to say, 'Be on your guard, stranger; what's good to look at may be mortal bad to feed on.' There's many a warnin' in things that don't talk with our tongues, but have a language of their own."

"Very true all that, sir," resumed the other; "but it was always a puzzle to me why people with such good faculties would make so bad a use of them."

"Ain't it all clear enough they was meant for examples,--jest that and no more? You see that clever fellow yonder; he can do fifty things you and I could n't; he has got brains for this, that, and t'other. Well, if he's a rogue, he won't be satisfied with workin' them brains God has given him, because he has no right sense of thankfulness in his heart, but he 'll be counterfitin' all sorts of brains that he has n't got at all: these are the devil's gifts, and they do the devil's work."

"I know one thing," said Winthrop, doggedly, "it is that sort of folk make the best way in life."

"Clear wrong--all straight on end--unsound doctrine that, sir. We never think of countin' the failures, the chaps that are in jail, or at the galleys, or maybe hanged. We only take the two or three successful rogues that figure in high places, and we say, 'So much for knavery'

Now let me jest ask you, How did they come there? Was n't it by pretend in' to be good men? Wasn't it by mock charity, mock patriotism, mock sentiment in fifty ways, supported now and then by a bit of real action, just as a forger always slips a real gold piece amongst his counterfeits? And what is all this but sayin' the way to be prosperous is to be good--"

"Or to seem good!" broke in Winthrop.

"Well, sir, the less we question seemin' the better! I 'd rather be taken in every day of the week than I 'd go on doubtin' every hour of the day, and I believe one must come very nigh to either at last."