the cause of their misfortunes? Whether he believed it was dangerous? What he supposed, for example, Ham would do, if he and Steerforth ever should encounter?

‘I doen’t know, sir,’ he replied. ‘I have thowt of it oftentimes, but I can’t awize myself of it, no matters.’

I recalled to his remembrance the morning after her departure, when we were all three on the beach.

‘Do you recollect,’ said I, ‘a certain wild way in which he looked out to sea, and spoke about “the end of it”?’

‘Sure I do!’ said he.

‘What do you suppose he meant?’

‘Mas’r Davy,’ he replied,