The first thing Mat did when he got to his lodgings¹, was to fill and light his pipe. He then sat down on his bear-skins, and dragged the box close to him which he had brought from Dibbledean.

Although the machinery² of Mat’s mind was constructed of very clumsy and barbaric materials; although book-learning had never oiled it, and wise men’s talk had never quickened it; nevertheless, it always contrived³ to work on—much as it was working now—until it reached, sooner or later, a practical result. Solitude⁴ and Peril⁵ are stern schoolmasters, but they do their duty for good or evil, thoroughly⁶ with some men; and they had done it thoroughly, amid the rocks and wildernesses⁷ of the great American continent, with Mat.

Many a pipe did he empty and fill again, many a dark change passed over his heavy features, as he now pondered long and laboriously⁸ over every word of the dialogue that had just been held between himself and Zack. But not so much as five minutes out of all the time he thus consumed, was, in any true sense of the word, time wasted. He had sat down to his first pipe, resolved that, if any human means could compass it, he would find out how the young girl whom he had seen in Mr. Blyth’s studio, had first come there, and who she really was. When he rose up at last, and put the pipe away to cool, he had thought the matter fairly out from beginning to end, had arrived at his conclusions, and had definitely settled his future plans.

Reflection had strengthened him in the resolution to follow his first impulse when he parted from Zack in the street, and begin the attempt to penetrate⁹ the suspicious secret that hid from him and from every one the origin of Valentine’s adopted child, by getting possession of the Hair

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