othing bad comes amiss when I am out. The snow lay on the rails, I
don't know how thick; at one station we were detained two hours."

"Are you proposing to make any stay at West Lynne?"

"Off again to-morrow. My leave, this time, is to be spent at my
mother's. I may bestow a week of it or so on West Lynne, but am not
sure. I must be back in Ireland in a month. Such a horrid boghole we are
quartered in just now!"

"To go from one subject to another," observed Mr. Carlyle; "there is
a question I have long thought to put to you, Thorn, did we ever meet
again. Which year was it that you were staying at Swainson?"

Major Thorn mentioned it. It was the year of Hallijohn's murder.

"As I thought--in fact, know," said Mr. Carlyle. "Did you, while you
were stopping there, ever come across a namesake of yours--one Thorn?"

"I believe I did. But I don't know the man, of my knowledge, and I saw
him but once only. I don't think he was living at Swainson. I never
observed him in the town."

"Where did you meet with him?"

"At a roadside beer-shop, about two miles from Swainson. I was riding
one day, when a fearful storm came on, and I took shelter there.
Scarcely had I entered, when another horsemen rode up, and he likewise
took shelter--a tall, dandified man, aristocratic and exclusive. When he
departed--for he quitted first, the storm being over--I asked the people
who he was. They said they did not know, though they had often seen him
ride by; but a man who was there, drinking, said he was a Captain Thorn.
The same man, by the way, volunteered the information that he came from
a distance; somewhere near West Lynne; I remember that."

"That Captain Thorn did?"

"No--that he, himself did. He appeared to know nothing of Captain Thorn,
beyond the name."

It seemed to be ever so! Scraps of information, but nothing tangible.
Nothing to lay hold of, or to know the man by. Would it be thus always?

"Should you recognize him again were you to see him?" resumed Mr.
Carlyle awakening from his reverie.

"I think I should. There was something peculiar in his countenance, and
I remember it well yet."

"Were you by chance to meet him, and discover his real name--for I have
reason to believe that Thorn, the one he went by then, was an assumed
one--will you oblige me by letting me know it?"

"With all the pleasure in life," replied the major. "The chances are
against it though, confined as I am to that confounded sister country.