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302 as on the preceding day, to find out, if he could, what the Admiralty were doing in view of the robbery of the Bellonic; and Osbart, refusing to get up to breakfast, lay in bed reading the morning papers. We had been left thus about the space of an hour when there came a telegram for the doctor, who read it with a fierce exclamation.

"The Captain wants me urgently," said he, "and there's nothing to do but to leave you here. We are trusting absolutely to you, now; but be quite sure, if you make half a move to betray us, it will be the last you will ever make. I may return here in ten minutes. You must put up with the indignity of being locked in; and, dear boy, don't trouble yourself to look for sympathy in this place, for the man who owns this house is one of us, and, if you call out, you'll get a rap on the head pretty quickly."

He went out jauntily, and I watched him, little thinking that I should never see him again. When he was gone I sat in the great armchair, pulling it to the window, and taking up my book. The sensation of being alone in the centre of London, and unable by my oath to make the slightest attempt to help myself, was most curious; yet with it all I could not but think that I had touched the culminating point, and was near to the ending of it for good or for ill. From the window of my room I could hear