Chance and tide favoured him. The steamer was to leave at eleven o'clock. This afforded time for a leisurely breakfast at the Franklin, and would enable him to reach Dinan early in the afternoon. He breakfasted briefly and temperately, as became a man whose mind was full of anxious thought, and then went for a stroll in the old streets, and looked in at the Cathedral.
He had reflected seriously upon his interview with the criminal lawyer. The fact that he had found his own original opinion about Bothwell Grahame shared by this man, so deeply versed in the ways of criminals, in the science of circumstantial evidence, was to the last degree startling and disconcerting. He felt that he was setting out upon a task which he could but perform in a half-hearted manner, struggle as he might against that first conviction of his. He had undertaken this task for Hilda's sake, for Dora's sake. What misery must result if Joseph Distin were right after all, and in an ill-judged attempt to gratify these two trusting women he should bring about the discovery of Bothwell's guilt! That guilt was at present but a dark suspicion which men hardly dared hint to each other; but if Distin's judgment was correct, any unlucky discovery might make the suspicion a fact.
But he had promised, and the pledge must be kept. He must follow up the clue which he held till it led him to other links in the chain of the victim's history; and the chances were that in the victim's history he would find a clue to the murderer's identity.
It was a lovely autumnal noontide, and the gay little town of Dinard, with its gardens rising stage above stage on the slope of the hill, its queer little bays and recesses of golden sand, was smiling in sunlight as the "Isle et Rance" steamed across the broad bay of St. Malo to the mouth of the Rance. There are few prettier rivers than this little Rhine of Brittany, and Edward Heathcote had loved it well in days gone by. But to-day he sat upon the bridge smoking his cigar, and gazing at the green hills and hanging woods, the villas and villages, and craggy cliffs and ever-varying shore, without seeing the objects upon which his eyes seemed to rest. The nearer he came to the task of investigation, the more irksome became his duty. His heart failed him as he took out the silver locket, and read the name upon the paper inside. It was the name of the woman who was to enlighten him about the dead girl, who was perhaps to put in his hand the clue which would lead him straight to the murderer.
And yet who could say that he would find Sister Gudule de la Miséricorde at Dinan? He did not even know the name of the convent in which she lived. She might be dead. And yet the date of the inscription was but two years old. There was
