George Shepard—Cowell Devlin

George Shepard and Cowell Devlin have a formal, cool relationship that becomes strained when Shepard finds a charred deed of gift hidden in Devlin’s Bible. Their confrontation is not simply about possession of a document: it turns on whether concealing uncertain information protects Anna Wetherell from false hope, or suppresses evidence that might explain the gold in Crosbie Wells’s cottage and the fate of Emery Staines.

Professional distance

For much of their association, Shepard and Devlin remain colleagues rather than intimates. Shepard spends his days overseeing construction at Seaview and returns to the temporary Police Camp to write letters and tally accounts. Devlin, who finds the atmosphere there more comfortable when Shepard is away, has not tried to make their relationship closer. His imagined judgment of Shepard is measured and qualified: he pities the gaoler’s rigidity, regrets the displeasure with which Shepard seems to meet the world, and wishes him well, while expecting no more than a strictly professional, cool association.

That reserve shapes their later exchange. The encounter begins not with a confession or a personal appeal, but with Shepard entering the gaol-house while Devlin is preaching to the prisoners about rote prayer. It is Sunday; the construction work has stopped, and Devlin’s battered Bible is beside him, closed. Shepard’s imposing presence brings the conversation to a pause. He asks for the Bible, explaining that he does not want to disturb his wife during her devotions by using his own. The explanation gives Devlin little reassurance: he knows what the book contains and understands that even an apparently casual search could expose the paper.

The deed in the Bible

The document had been found in Crosbie Wells’s cottage when Devlin went to collect Wells’s remains. It was partly charred, and stated that on 11 October 1865, two thousand pounds were to be given to Anna Wetherell by Emery Staines, with Wells as witness. Devlin considers the deed invalid because Staines, the principal, has not signed it. Yet its legal defect does not make it unimportant: its terms connect Anna, Staines, Wells, and a fortune whose ownership is uncertain.

Devlin has already hidden the document in his Bible, between the Old and New Testaments. When Shepard asks to look through the book, Devlin weighs the danger of extracting the paper: its charred condition would attract notice, and he is surrounded by prisoners with nowhere to conceal it. He lets Shepard take the Bible. After Devlin has finished his sermon and returned to Shepard’s study, he sees that the book is open on the desk and the damaged slip lies plainly on top. Shepard has found the evidence Devlin had kept from view.

Competing readings of the gold

Shepard treats the deed as a possible explanation for the fortune in Wells’s cottage. He proposes that the gold originated with Staines and that Wells, named as witness, may have been holding it for him. He also points to Staines’s disappearance on the day Wells died, while noting that Wells was not generally thought to possess wealth. His theory gives the deed an evidentiary force beyond its validity as a contract: even unsigned, it could change how the fortune and the disappearance are understood.

Devlin knows more about the gold’s history than he tells Shepard. He knows that it came from four gowns sewn by Lydia Wells and purchased by Anna; that Ah Quee extracted and retorted the gold; and that Staines later stole it and concealed it in Wells’s cottage. He does not disclose this chain of events. Instead, he says there is no reason to think the fortune belonged to Staines, while maintaining that the deed cannot establish a gift without Staines’s signature. His silence protects information, but it also leaves Shepard to interpret the document with an incomplete account of the gold’s passage.

Their disagreement is therefore about more than legal form. Shepard tests the possibility that the paper illuminates the case; Devlin insists that it is not a valid contract and resists letting a speculative promise shape Anna’s expectations. The difference between what Devlin knows and what he is willing to reveal gives their exchange its tension: Shepard’s hypothesis is partly mistaken about the gold’s origin, even as the deed does point toward Staines and Wells.

Secrecy and responsibility

Devlin explains that he concealed the deed because telling Anna about a possible two-thousand-pound gift might raise hopes that could later be crushed. He has resolved to keep it private until Staines is either recovered or known to be dead. If Staines is dead, Devlin intends to destroy the paper; if Staines lives, he will show it to him and let him decide whether to sign. If Staines is never found, Devlin believes that withholding the deed will prevent dashed hopes, bloodshed, and a loss of faith. He presents secrecy as a precaution taken for Anna’s sake, though the choice also keeps her from knowledge that concerns her directly.

Shepard presses the unresolved question of what should happen if Staines is never found. He does not accept Devlin’s certainty that silence is the kinder course, and directs him instead toward the Wayfarer’s Fortune, where Anna may be spoken with. The suggestion is pointed: Devlin has framed his decision around Anna’s welfare, while Shepard implies that she herself may be the person to consult. Devlin’s account of compassion and Shepard’s challenge remain in friction rather than arriving at agreement.

After Devlin leaves, Shepard burns the only copy of his separate agreement with Harald Nilssen, under which Nilssen had promised to keep quiet about a four-hundred-pound investment in the prison project. That act does not resolve the dispute over the deed, but it places the confrontation within a wider pattern: Shepard, too, handles documents and secrecy when his own interests are involved. The Bible returns to Devlin with the charred paper protruding from it, visibly dividing the book. Their relationship remains formally professional, but the episode has made its limits unmistakable: each man has guarded information, and each regards the other’s judgment as inadequate to the stakes.