appened:

The young man had come back to England unwillingly, though he was coming
to such wealth. Having left his father so long before in anger, he
hardly liked to touch the money. And he dreaded having to marry a young
lady he had never seen, with whom all his life he might be most unhappy.

On the ship was a seaman about his own age whose face somewhat resembled
his own. With this man Harmon became friendly and before the ship
reached England he had told him his trouble and his dread. The other
proposed that Harmon disguise himself in sailor's clothes, go into the
neighborhood where Miss Bella Wilfer lived, and see if she was one whom
he could love.

Now the man whom Harmon was thus trusting was a villain, who, while he
had been listening to the other's story, had been planning a crime
against him. He had made up his mind to kill Harmon, and, as he looked
so much like him, to marry Bella himself and claim the fortune.

Near the docks where the ship came in was a sailors' boarding-house
owned by a riverman of bad reputation named "Rogue" Riderhood. Riderhood
had once been the partner of Hexam, the man who found the floating body,
but one day he was caught trying to rob a live man and Hexam had cast
him off. The seaman took Harmon to this house and there he secretly got
from Riderhood some poison. Last he persuaded Harmon to change clothes
with him.

All that remained now was to get rid of the real Harmon. To do this he
put the poison in a cup of coffee, and Harmon, drinking this, became
insensible.

The lodging-house hung out over the river and the wicked man had
intended throwing the other's body, dressed now in seaman's clothing,
into the water. But fate was quickly to spoil his plan. He and some
others fell to quarreling over the money found in the clothing of the
unconscious man. The result was a desperate fight, and when it was over
there were _two_ bodies thrown from the window into the black river--the
drugged man and the seaman who had planned his murder.

The shock of the cold water brought the drugged Harmon to his senses. He
struck out, and after a terrible struggle succeeded in reaching shore.
The exposure and the poison made him very ill and he lay abed in an inn
for some days. While he was lying helpless there the drowned body of the
seaman was found by Hexam, the riverman. As it wore the clothes of John
Harmon, and had his papers in its pockets, every one supposed, of
course, that it was the bo