way, there would not be this beastly separation.'

Toffy appeared at the wire door of the corridor and shouted to them
that breakfast was ready, and Peter strolled towards the house. It was
an absurdly small dwelling, one story high, but with a number of low
buildings round it, covering a considerable amount of ground. And
withal it was a trim place which a man had furnished and fitted and
made ready for his bride, and the poor little garden, now devoid of
flowers, was another evidence of his care. The dining-room was a small
whitewashed hall hung with guns and rifles, and furnished with a table
and a deal cupboard which held some bottles of the rough red wine of
the country. The room next to it, called by courtesy the drawing-room,
had been built for Mrs. Chance when the rest of the house had been made
ready for her, and it still bore upon it the impress of a lady's taste.
There was a shelf running round the room furnished with photographs,
and a sofa covered with a guanaco rug. In one corner of the room stood
a piano, and upon it was a copy of _Hymns Ancient and Modern_, with
music, for Mrs. Chance had been a parson's daughter at home, and she
used to play to Chance and sing very sweetly on Sunday evenings.

The roughly built fireplace in the room was filled with logs, and a
guitar always stood on a cretonne-covered box close by. It was on this
little cretonne-covered box that Mrs. Chance had been wont to sit and
play the guitar which Chance had purchased for her, and one of the
peons had taught her to thrum Spanish airs upon it. It had been a
pleasure to her during the brief year that she had spent in the
estancia house, with its red roof and simple rooms, and the corridor
that had been enclosed with wire-netting for her. It was she who had
carved the blotter and paper-knife on the writing-table, and had made
covers for the chairs. Mrs. Chance and her baby lie buried in the
cemetery at Buenos Ayres, and the estancia house always has an
unfinished look about it, for Chance likes to have it just as she left
it.

Three or four sparsely furnished rooms opened out of the living-room,
and the corridor made a cool resting-place for the wayfaring men who
often rode up to the house at sundown, and for whose tired limbs a
catre and a rug were sufficient for a night of dreamless slumber.

'All the same,' said Peter to himself, 'we don't seem to get much
forrader in our search for the missing heir.'

Many weeks had