'Ardy used
to yarn most about the coins he had gone through; he
had lived with bookmakers, and jockeys, and pugs, and
actors, and all that--a precious low lot," added this
judicious person. "But it's about here my 'orse is
moored, and by your leave I'll be getting ahead."
"One moment," said I. "Is Mr. Sebright on board?"
"No, sir, he's ashore to-day," said the sailor. "I
took up a bag for him to the 'otel."
With that we parted. Presently after my friend
overtook and passed me on a hired steed which seemed to
scorn its cavalier; and I was left in the dust of his
passage, a prey to whirling thoughts. For I now stood,
or seemed to stand, on the immediate threshold of these
mysteries. I knew the name of the man Dickson--his
name was Carthew; I knew where the money came from that
opposed us at the sale--it was part of Carthew's
inheritance; and in my gallery of illustrations to the
history of the wreck, one more picture hung, perhaps
the most dramatic of the series. It showed me the deck
of a warship in that distant part of the great ocean,
the officers and seamen looking curiously on: and a man
of birth and education, who had been sailing under an
alias on a trading brig, and was now rescued from
desperate peril, felled like an ox by the bare sound of
his own name.
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