Everard left St. Oswyth\'s by the six o\'clock train on Saturday morning. Four hours later he was in Liverpool. Taking a cab for himself and his portmanteau, he proceeded direct to the shipping office and there booked a berth on board the Arbaces for New York. Thence he was driven to the landing-stage, where he found the tender whose duty it was to transfer the passengers and their luggage on board the huge liner anchored out in mid-stream.
On reaching the Arbaces Lisle at once made his way to the stateroom which had been allotted him. He knew already that he would have to share it with a fellow-passenger, and when, on entering it, he found there a dressing-case and a small portmanteau, a natural curiosity to ascertain the name of the person who, for the next week or more would be his nightly, if not his daily companion, led him to turn up one of the labels and read what was written thereon. Rarely, perhaps never, in his life had Everard Lisle been more amazed than he was when his eyes took in these words: "John Alexander, Esq. Passenger to New York." By one of those singular coincidences, which are far more common than the generality of people imagine them to be, he and the man of whom he was in pursuit, and on whom he had not expected to set eyes till after a journey of close upon four thousand miles, had crossed each other\'s path at the outset. Yet, but for the chance of his having read the address label when he did, they would probably have been shipmates for some time before discovering the relation in which each stood to the other, and, in any case, as the Arbaces did not call at Queenstown, they would have been compelled in their own despite to make the voyage out and home again.
Lisle had not recovered from his astonishment when the cabin door was opened from without and he saw before him a tall, finely-built man of middle age, with high aquiline features, dark, grave, earnest-looking eyes, a somewhat worn and thoughtful-looking face, and a long flowing beard already flecked with white.
"My cabin chum, I presume," said the stranger in a deep mellow voice, and with an exceedingly pleasant smile. "I hope we shall have a good passage, and that at the end of it our companionship will remain a pleasant recollection in connection with it."
Everard smiled and bowed. "I have taken the liberty of reading the name on your luggage," he said. "Pray excuse the question. I have a special reason for asking it, but are you Mr. John Alexander of Pineapple City in the State of Michigan?"
The other lifted his eyebrows in surprise. "That is certainly my address, and therefore I can only assume that I am the person to whom you refer."
"Then you must be the person whom I was going all the way to Pineapple City in search of I am especially glad that I have met you now and here--for one thing, because my having done so will save me the necessity of a voyage to the States and back. Mr. Alexander, I am the bearer of a letter addressed to you from Sir Gilbert Clare of Withington Chase."
For a moment or two it seemed to Mr. Alexander as if the cabin floor were rising and sinking, as it might have done in a heavy gale. He seated himself on the edge of his berth; his face had faded to an ashen grey.
"A letter from my--from Sir Gilbert Clare for me!" he said, speaking like a man in a dream.
From the case which he carried in his breast pocket, Everard extracted Sir Gilbert\'s missive and handed it to the other. "I will see you again in the course of a few minutes," he said.
It will be enough to say that neither one nor the other sailed by the Arbaces, but caused themselves and their belongings to be transferred back to shore at the last moment.
A few hours later, as they sat together over their coffee and cigars in a private room of the Adelphi Hotel, Liverpool, John Alexander Clare proceeded to give his companion an outline of his history from the time of the explosion of the lake steamer by which he was supposed to have been killed. Of that narrative all that need be given here is such a summary as will enable the reader to follow the sequence of events, the outcome of which was the unpremeditated meeting of himself and Lisle on board the Arbaces.
As may perhaps be remembered, Mr. Travis, Alec\'s business partner, could not reasonably have come to any other conclusion than that the latter had lost his life by the explosion of the Prairie Belle, seeing that week after week passed over without bringing any tidings of him; and, indeed, it was not till nearly three months had gone by that one day a tall, emaciated, almost ghastly figure stalked into the office, and for the moment all but made Mr. Travis\'s hair stand on end when, in hollow tones, it said: "Well, Frank, old fellow, how are you by now?"
It appeared that he had been picked up, clinging to a spar and all but insensible, nearly an hour after the explosion had taken place. His rescuer, a farmer who lived on the margin of the lake, caused Alec to be taken to his house, where he was carefully nursed and tended by the farmer\'s wife and daughter. He had been terribly bruised and half blinded by the explosion, and for several weeks he wandered in his mind and knew neither where he was, nor what had befallen him.
The farmer and his family belonged to the sect known as Quietists, and as they read no newspapers and held as little communion with the outside world as possible, it followed that Alec\'s name was omitted from the published list of the survivors of the explosion. Small wonder was it that Travis almost looked upon his partner as on one come back from the grave.
Not till then did Alec learn of the inquiries which had been made about him during his absence. That the man who made them had come specially from England, Mr. Travis did not doubt, but as he had declined to state the nature of his business, there was nothing more to tell. The fact interested Alec but faintly, and soon passed out of his thoughts. He was a banished man; his wife had deserted him; his child was dead; and to him, after his accident and the illness which resulted from it, his past life gradually assumed the faded proportions of a dream, and not a real experience of his own.
And so one uneventful year after another dragged out its little span, the partners meanwhile prospering in business, and never being other than the best of friends.
At length, through the death of a relative, Mr. Travis succeeded to a considerable property and at once made up his mind to return to England. Alec, who for some years past had been pining for news from home, and who could not but remember that his father was getting well advanced in years, begged of his friend, on his arrival in the old country, to go to Mapleford and make certain inquiries sub rosa, and communicate the result to him. This Mr. Travis at once proceeded to do, writing Alec to the effect that his stepmother and his three half-brothers had all been some years dead, that a tablet to his, Alec\'s memory had been put up in the church where so many of his progenitors were buried, that his son had been adopted by Sir Gilbert as the latter\'s heir, and that his wife, under the designation of Mrs. Alexander Clare, was residing at the house known as Maylings, within a mile of the Chase.
Alec was astounded. His child had been a girl, and he had still by him, carefully preserved, his wife\'s heartless letter and the certificate of the infant\'s death. The result of Mr. Travis\'s letter was that, three weeks later, Alec landed at Liverpool.
What followed is already known to the reader. Alec\'s reason for not denouncing Luigi to Sir Gilbert at an earlier date was owing to his wife\'s absence in Italy, of which he had learnt through certain inquiries made on his account by Martin Rigg. Before taking any ............