" "I have a question to propose to you," said Trenchard, "relating to—" and he hesitated. ” She spotted a beer bottle and picked it up from the ground. ‘Well, if the fellow Gosse is still at large, there’s no saying what he will be at next, is there? I see nothing for it but for you to see General Lord Charvill at once. ” Lucy’s nagging worry raised its own status to full blown alarm. Too many. She feared he might take her tears as a sign of weakness. The ripple of the water against the boat, as its keel cleaves through the stream—the darkling current hurrying by—the indistinctly-seen craft, of all forms and all sizes, hovering around, and making their way in ghostlike silence, or warning each other of their approach by cries, that, heard from afar, have something doleful in their note—the solemn shadows cast by the bridges—the deeper gloom of the echoing arches—the lights glimmering from the banks—the red reflection thrown upon the waves by a fire kindled on some stationary barge—the tall and fantastic shapes of the houses, as discerned through the obscurity;—these, and other sights and sounds of the same character, give a sombre colour to the thoughts of one who may choose to indulge in meditation at such a time and in such a place.