In England, in his magnificent Suffolk home, he was a confirmed sybarite, in whose service every description of comfort and luxury had to be enrolled.

Here tonight in the rough and tattered clothes of a coal-heaver, drenched to the skin, and crouching under the body of a cart that hardly sheltered him from the rain, he was as happy as a schoolboy out for a holiday.
Happy, but vaguely anxious.
He had no means of ascertaining the time.

So many of the church-bells and clock towers had been silenced recently that not one of those welcome sounds penetrated to the dreary desolation of this canal wharf, with its abandoned carts standing ghostlike in a row.

Darkness had set in very early in the afternoon, and the heavers had given up work soon after four o'clock.
For about an hour after that a certain animation had still reigned round the wharf, men crossing and going, one or two of the barges moving in or out alongside the quay.

But for some time now darkness and silence had been the masters in this desolate spot, and that time had seemed to Sir Andrew an eternity.