had increased to a gale, so that walking along the exposed road had
been no easy matter. Johnny by this time was almost desperate with
alarm, for Captain Polkington had not come back and, in spite of a
continuous search in likely and unlikely places, he had not been able
to find any trace of him or his whisky. It is true his search was not
very systematic at the best of times; it is not likely to have been
now; as his alarm increased, it grew worse, until, by the time Julia
came in, it had become little more than a repeated looking in the same
unlikely places and an incessant toiling up and down-stairs and across
the garden in the howling wind.

His account of the Captain's vanishing was much obscured by
self-condemnation and anxiety, still she managed to make it out and
she did not at first think so very seriously of it. She concluded from
it that her father had succeeded in getting at his whisky and Johnny
had failed to prevent him or find out the whereabouts of the store--a
not very astonishing occurrence. The fact that the Captain had not
returned or shown himself for so long was surprising and to be
regretted, seeing the badness of the weather. But it was not
inexplicable; he might be anxious to demonstrate his freedom, or, by
frightening them, to pay them out for the watch lately kept on him;
or--and this was the one serious aspect of the matter--he might have
taken more of the spirit than he could stand in his weak state and be
too stupid and muddled to come back alone. Julia reassured Johnny as
well as she could, and then, accompanied by him, set to work to search
thoroughly the house, garden and out-buildings.

It was dinner time before they had finished. Julia came to the doorway
of the bulb shed uneasy and perplexed. "It is clear he is not here,"
she said, and turned to fasten the door. A gust of wind tore it from
her hand, flinging it back noisily. She caught it again and secured
it. "It is dinner time," she said; "come along indoors, there is no
reason why you should go hungry because father chooses to."

Johnny followed her to the house. When they were indoors he said, "Do
you think--you don't think he has had an attack?--that he is lying
unconscious somewhere?" That was precisely what Julia was beginning to
think; there seemed no other possible explanation. Johnny read her
mind in her face and was overwhelmed with the sense of his own
shortcomings and their possible consequences.

"It is not your fa