dden. He sits all day in
bed and plays cards with his granddaughter or with a very superior
valet, and talks politics with the men who come to see him. Oh yes, he's
a quaint old beggar. He has a great quantity of white hair and an
enormous square white beard and the fiercest eyes I ever saw, I should
think. Everybody's frightened out of their wits of him. Well, he sits up
there and rules his family in good old patriarchal style, and it seems
he came down a bit hard on the poor boy one day over some folly or
other, and there was a row and the boy went out of the house swearing
he'd be even."

"Ah, well, then," said Ste. Marie, "the matter seems simple enough. A
foolish boy's foolish pique. He is staying in hiding somewhere to
frighten his grandfather. When he thinks the time favorable he will come
back and be wept over and forgiven."

The other man walked a little way in silence.

"Ye-es," he said, at last. "Yes, possibly. Possibly you are right.
That's what the grandfather thinks. It's the obvious solution.
Unfortunately there is more or less against it. The boy went away
with--so far as can be learned--almost no money, almost none at all. And
he has already been gone a month. Miss Benham, his sister, is sure that
something has happened to him, and I'm a bit inclined to think so, too.
It's all very odd. I should think he might have been kidnapped but that
no demand has been made for money."

"He was not," suggested Ste. Marie--"not the sort of young man to do
anything desperate--make away with himself?" Hartley laughed.

"Oh, Lord, no!" said he. "Not that sort of young man at all. He was a
very normal type of rich and spoiled and somewhat foolish American boy."

"Rich?" inquired the other, quickly.

"Oh yes; they're beastly rich. Young Arthur is to come into something
very good at his majority, I believe, from his father's estate, and the
old grandfather is said to be indecently rich--rolling in it! There's
another reason why the young idiot wouldn't be likely to stop away of
his own accord. He wouldn't risk anything like a serious break with the
old gentleman. It would mean a loss of millions to him, I dare say, for
the old beggar is quite capable of cutting him off if he takes the
notion. Oh, it's a bad business all through."

And after they had gone on a bit he said it again, shaking his head:

"It's a bad business! That poor girl, you know. It's hard on her. She
was fond of the young ass for some reason or