ped with everything he
could lay his hands on; and from the position of affairs you may guess
that he made a very good haul. Well, poor Horne found himself in a maze
of difficulties; in fact, his clerk's fraud ruined him. Everything that
could be sold or mortgaged had to go to the settlement, and when his
affairs had been finally put straight, there was only a little bit left,
that had been so settled upon his wife that no one could touch it. He
made a good fight of it for a little while, with the help of a few old
friends, but, in the end, he broke down again for the third time. But he
escaped out of the asylum and went abroad, without seeing his friends or
his child, and a few months afterward the announcement of his death in
an American asylum was sent by a correspondent out there. Happily there
were no difficulties about securing the mother's money for the son, and
it was enough to educate the boy and to give him a start; but, of
course, he had to begin the world as a poor man instead of a rich one.
Perhaps that was all the better for him--or so I thought until lately."

"And what are these signs of a morbid tendency that you spoke of?" asked
the doctor.

"Well, in the first place, after being almost extravagant in his
devotion to my daughter, Doreen, he now neglects her outrageously--comes
down very seldom, writes short letters or none. Now, my daughter is not
the sort of girl that a sane man would neglect," added Doctor Wedmore,
proudly.

"Certainly not," assented the doctor, inwardly thinking that it was much
less surprising than it would have been in the case of one of his own
girls.

"In the second place, he is always harping upon the subject of Jacobs
and his peculations--an old subject, which he might well let rest. And,
in the third place, he has become moody, morose and absent-minded; and
my son, Max, who often visits him at his chambers in Lincoln's Inn, has
noticed the change even more than I, who have fewer opportunities of
seeing him."

The doctor was puffing stolidly at his pipe and looking at the fire.

"It is very difficult to form an opinion upon report only," said he.
"Frankly, I can see nothing in what you have told me about the young man
which could not be explained in other and likelier ways. He may have got
entangled, for instance, with some woman in London."

Mr. Wedmore took fire at this suggestion.

"In that case, the sooner Doreen forgets all about him the better."

"Mind, I'm on