It is all the more singular, therefore, that one evening, after he had been at Blanquais a fortnight, a train of thought should suddenly have been set in motion in his mind.

It was kindled by no outward occurrence, but by some wandering spark of fancy or of memory, and the immediate effect of it was to startle our hero very much as he had been startled on the evening I have described.

The circumstances were the same; he had wandered down to the beach alone, very late, and he stood looking at the duskily-tumbling sea.

Suddenly the same voice that had spoken before murmured another phrase in the darkness, and it rang upon his ear for the rest of the night.

It startled him, as I have said, at first; then, the next morning, it led him to take his departure for Paris.