He assured himself of this, he threw off his clothes, he plunged
into the icy water, and swam for the spot. Climbing the timbers,
he took from them, caught among their interstices by its chain, a
gold watch, bearing engraved upon its back E. D.
He brought the watch to the bank, swam to the Weir again, climbed
it, and dived off. He knew every hole and corner of all the
depths, and dived and dived and dived, until he could bear the cold
no more. His notion was, that he would find the body; he only
found a shirt-pin sticking in some mud and ooze.
With these discoveries he returned to Cloisterham, and, taking
Neville Landless with him, went straight to the Mayor. Mr. Jasper
was sent for, the watch and shirt-pin were identified, Neville was
detained, and the wildest frenzy and fatuity of evil report rose
against him. He was of that vindictive and violent nature, that
but for his poor sister, who alone had influence over him, and out
of whose sight he was never to be trusted, he would be in the daily
commission of murder. Before coming to England he had caused to be
whipped to death sundry 'Natives'--nomadic persons, encamping now
in Asia, now in Africa, now in the West Indies, and now at the
North Pole--vaguely supposed in Cloisterham to be always black,
always of great virtue, always calling themselves Me, and everybody
else Massa or Missie (according to sex), and always reading tracts
of the obscurest meaning, in broken English, but always accurately
understanding them in the purest mother tongue.
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