As we went down to the boat next morning, Walter could not quite keep off the subject of last night, though he was more hopeful than he had been then, and seemed to think that if the unlucky homicide could not be got to go over-sea, he might at any rate go and live somewhere in the neighbourhood pretty much by himself; at any rate, that was what he himself had proposed.

To Dick, and I must say to me also, this seemed a strange remedy; and Dick said as much.

Quoth he: "Friend Walter, don't set the man brooding on the tragedy by letting him live alone.

That will only strengthen his idea that he has committed a crime, and you will have him killing himself in good earnest." Said Clara: "I don't know.

If I may say what I think of it, it is that he had better have his fill of gloom now, and, so to say, wake up presently to see how little need there has been for it; and then he will live happily afterwards.