Once get the snapper chest, and we're right as ninepenn'orth o' hapence." This conversation, interspersed with oaths and slang as it was, had an intense interest for Rufus Dawes.

Plunged into prison, hurriedly tried, and by reason of his surroundings ignorant of the death of his father and his own fortune, he had hitherto--in his agony and sullen gloom--held aloof from the scoundrels who surrounded him, and repelled their hideous advances of friendship.

He now saw his error.

He knew that the name he had once possessed was blotted out, that any shred of his old life which had clung to him hitherto, was shrivelled in the fire that consumed the "Hydaspes".

The secret, for the preservation of which Richard Devine had voluntarily flung away his name, and risked a terrible and disgraceful death, would be now for ever safe; for Richard Devine was dead--lost at sea with the crew of the ill-fated vessel in which, deluded by a skilfully-sent letter from the prison, his mother believed him to have sailed.