ent.
Captain Elisha stared straight before him, unseeingly, the color fading
from his cheeks. Then he put both elbows on the table and covered his
face with his hands.

"You see, Captain," said Sylvester, gently, "how very serious the
situation is. Graves has put it bluntly, but what he says is literally
true. If your brother had deliberately planned to hand his children over
to the mercy of that missing stockholder, he couldn't have done it more
completely."

Slowly the captain raised his head. His expression was a strange one;
agitated and shocked, but with a curious look of relief, almost of
triumph.

"At last!" he said, solemnly. "At last! Now it's _all_ plain!"

"All?" repeated Sylvester. "You mean--?"

"I mean everything, all that's been puzzlin' me and troublin' my head
since the very beginnin'. All of it! _Now_ I know why! Oh, 'Bije! 'Bije!
'Bije!"

Kuhn spoke quickly.

"Captain," he said, "I believe you know who the owner of that one
hundred shares is. Do you?"

Captain Elisha gravely nodded.

"Yes," he answered. "I know him."

"What?"

"You do?"

"Who is it?"

The questions were blurted out together. The captain looked at the three
excited faces. He hesitated and then, taking the stub of a pencil from
his pocket, drew toward him a memorandum pad lying on the table and
wrote a line upon the uppermost sheet. Tearing off the page, he tossed
it to Sylvester.

"That's the name," he said.

CHAPTER XVIII

Two more hours passed before the lawyers and their client rose from
their seats about the long table. Even then the consultation was not at
an end. Sylvester and the Captain lunched together at the Central Club
and sat in the smoking room until after four, talking earnestly. When
they parted, the attorney was grave and troubled.

"All right, Captain Warren," he said; "I'll do it. And you may be right.
I certainly hope you are. But I must confess I don't look forward to my
task with pleasure. I think I've got the roughest end."

"It'll be rough, there's no doubt about that. Rough for all hands, I
guess. And I hope you understand, Mr. Sylvester, that there ain't many
men I'd trust to do what I ask you to. I appreciate your doin' it more'n
I can tell you. Be as--as gentle as you can, won't you?"

"I will. You can depend upon that."

"I do. And I sha'n't forget it. Good-by, till the next time."

They shook hands. Captain Elisha returned to the boarding house, where
he found a lette