knew anything of the movements of the senior
partner. To all inquiries Ezra replied that he had been ordered by the
doctors to seek complete repose in the country. Dimsdale dogged Ezra's
footsteps night after night in the hope of gaining some clue, but in
vain. On the Saturday he followed him to the railway station, but Ezra,
as we have seen, succeeded in giving him the slip.

His father became seriously anxious about the young fellow's health.
He ate nothing and his sleep was much broken. Both the old people tried
to inculcate patience and moderation.

"That fellow, Ezra Girdlestone, knows where they are," Tom would cry,
striding wildly up and down the room with unkempt hair and clenched
hands. "I will have his secret, if I have to tear it out of him."

"Steady, lad, steady!" the doctor replied to one of these outbursts.
"There is nothing to be gained by violence. They are on the right side
of the law at present, and you will be on the wrong if you do anything
rash. The girl could have written if she were uncomfortable."

"Ah, so she could. She must have forgotten us. How could she, after
all that has passed!"

"Let us hope for the best, let us hope for the best," the doctor would
say soothingly. Yet it must be confessed that he was considerably
staggered by the turn which things had taken. He had seen so much of
the world in his professional capacity that he had become a very
reliable judge of character. All his instincts told him that Kate
Harston was a true-hearted and well-principled girl. It was not in her
nature to leave London and never to send a single line to her friends to
tell them where or why she had gone. There must, he was sure, be some
good reason for her silence, and this reason resolved itself into one or
two things--either she was ill and unable to hold a pen, or she had lost
her freedom and was restrained from writing to them. The last
supposition seemed to the doctor to be the more serious of the two.

Had he known the instability of the Girdlestone firm, and the necessity
they were under of getting ready money, he would at once have held the
key to the enigma. He had no idea of that, but in spite of his
ignorance he was deeply distrustful of both father and son. He knew and
had often deplored the clause in John Harston's will by which the ward's
money reverted to the guardian. Forty thousand pounds were a bait which
might tempt even a wealthy man into crooked paths.

It wa