better.

"Come," urged Richard; "I am only demanding the redemption of your
promise--one," added he, precipitately, "that it lies in your own power
to redeem."

"The conditions, Mr. Yorke, have not yet been fulfilled," said
Trevethick, pointing to the check. "I must see that money in
bank-notes."

He had not the least doubt of the genuineness of the document; but his
objection would at least give him the respite of another day or two, and
a respite seemed almost a reprieve.

"As you will," answered Richard, with a faint smile. "It is a matter of
perfect indifference to me, and only costs me a journey to Plymouth. If
you will be so good as to let me have some vehicle to take me as far as
Turlock, I will pack my carpet-bag and start at once."

The landlord nodded, and withdrew without a word.

Left to himself, the smile faded from Richard's face, and was succeeded
by a look of the utmost dejection and disappointment. All had been going
so well up to that very last moment, and now all remained to be done,
just as though nothing had been done at all. The dangerous path that he
had marked out for himself had to be trodden from first to last, at the
very moment when he had seemed to have reached his journey's end by a
safe short-cut. He knew that it was the smallest grain of suspicion, if
not the mere desire to procrastinate, that had turned the scale in
Trevethick's mind, and imposed this task upon him. The genuineness of
the check had been _almost_ taken for granted--entire success had been
missed, as it were, by a hair's-breadth. And now he was as far from it
as ever. Had he been but a little more earnest, or a little more
careless in his own manner, all might have been well. The obstacle that
intervened between him and his desire still stood there, though only by
an accident, as though, after he had fairly blown it into the air, it
had resettled itself precisely in the same spot.

Richard felt like some offender against the law who had been foiled in
an ingenious scheme by the stupidity rather than the sagacity of him he
would have defrauded; or, rather, like one who has been brought to
justice by misadventure--through some blunder which Fate itself had
suggested to his prosecutor. He was filled with bitterness and
mortification, and also with fear. This miscarriage now imposed a
necessity upon him, which he had contemplated, indeed, but never looked
fairly in the face; he had always hoped it might be evaded. The