aving them back with more benignity than
he thought he had in him. "Master Dick is safe enough. I know all about
it. Where is Dr. Grimstone? In the library, eh? Very well, I will see
him there."

And leaving Roly with the nurse, he went down to the library; not, if
the truth must be told, without a slight degree of nervousness,
unreasonable and unaccountable enough now, but quite beyond his power to
control.

He entered the room, and there, surrounded by piles of ticketed hats and
coats, under the pale light of one gas-burner, he saw the terrible man
before whom he had trembled for the last seven horrible days.

A feeling of self-defence made Paul assume rather more than his old
stiffness as he shook hands. "I am very glad to see you, Dr. Grimstone,"
he said, "but your coming at this time forces me to ask if there is any
unusual reason for, for my having the--a--pleasure of seeing you here?"

"I am exceedingly distressed to have to say that there is," said the
Doctor solemnly, "or I should not have troubled you at this hour. Try to
compose yourself, my dear sir, to bear this blow."

"I will," said Paul, "I will try."

"The fact is then, and I know how sad a story it must be for a parent's
ear, but the fact is, that your unhappy boy has had the inconceivable
rashness to quit my roof." And the Doctor paused to watch the effect of
his announcement.

"God bless my soul!" cried Paul. "You don't say, so!"

"I do indeed; he has, in short, run away. But don't be alarmed, my dear
Mr. Bultitude, I think I can assure you he is quite safe at the present
moment" ("Thank Heaven, he is!" thought Paul, thinking of his own
marvellous escape). "I should certainly have recaptured him before he
could have left the railway station, where he seems to have gone at
once, only, acting on information (which I strongly suspect now was
intentionally misleading), I drove on to the station on the up-line,
thinking to find him there. He was not there, sir, I believe he never
went there at all; but, guessing how matters were, I searched the train,
carriage by carriage, compartment by compartment, when it came up."

"I am very sorry you should have had so much trouble," said Paul, with a
vivid recollection of the exploring stick; "and so you found him?"

"No, sir," said the Doctor passionately, "I did not find him, but he was
there; he must have been there! but the shameless connivance of two
excessively ill-bred persons, who positively refu