He went from the
bill-discounter's office to a pawnbroker in the City, with whom he
pledged Georgy's trinkets and his own watch for the sum of a hundred and
twenty pounds. From the pawnbroker's he went back to Bayswater for his
portmanteau, and thence to the Euston Hotel, where he dined temperately
in the coffee-room. After dinner he went out into the dull back streets
that lurk behind Euston Square, and found an obscure little barber's
shop, where he had his whiskers shaved off, and his hyacinthine locks
cropped as close as the barber's big scissors could crop them.
The sacrifice of these hirsute adornments made an extraordinary change
in this man. All the worst characteristics of his countenance came out
with a new force; and the face of Mr. Sheldon, undisguised by the
whiskers that had hidden the corners of his mouth, or the waving locks
that had given height and breadth to his forehead, was a face that no one
would be likely to trust.
From the Euston Station he departed by the night mail for Liverpool,
under the cover of darkness. In that city he quietly awaited the
departure of the Cunard steamer for New York, and was so fortunate as to
leave England one day before that fatal date on which the first of his
fictitious bills arrival at maturity.
Book the Tenth.
HARBOUR, AFTER MANY SHIPWRECKS.
CHAPTER I.
OUT OF THE DARK VALLEY.
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