But it had cost him a hard struggle that morning, in the solitude of
one of his longest and loneliest walks, to compose himself--or, in his
favorite phrase, to "get to be his own man again."
From the moment when he had thrown the lock of hair into the fire, to
the moment when he was now loitering at Mr. Thorpe's door, _he_ had
never doubted, whatever others might have done, that the man who had
been the ruin of his sister, and the man who was the nearest blood
relation of the comrade who shared his roof, and lay sick at that
moment in his bed, were one and the same. Though he stood now, amid the
casual street spectators, apparently as indolently curious as the most
careless among them--looking at what they looked at, listening to what
they listened to, and leaving the square when they left it--he was
resolved all the time to watch his first opportunity of entering Mr.
Thorpe's house that very day; resolved to investigate through all its
ramifications the secret which he had first discovered when the
fragments of Zack's hair were playfully held up for him to look at in
the deaf and dumb girl's hand.
The dispersion of the idlers on the pavement was accelerated, and the
footman's imaginary description of the proceedings then in progress at
Mr.
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