nd so far as I am
concerned he was never heard of again.

'For four years he had lived as my own son, and it was I who took him
away from his father and his natural surroundings. I want you to find
him if you can. If he has been brought up vilely or treated brutally
by strangers, the fault, of course, lies with me; this will probably
distress you, but I think it will be an incentive also to you to try to
find the man.'

The letter was signed in Mrs. Ogilvie's name and it finished as
abruptly as it had begun.

* * * * *

The first thing that roused Peter from the sense of bewilderment and
almost of stupor which beset him was Dunbar's arrival at the estancia.

'Purvis has given us the slip again!' said the detective. 'The man has
as many lives is he has names! He has disappeared more than once
before, and he has even died, to my certain knowledge, two or three
times, in order to get out of a tight place.'

'Oh, Purvis, yes!' said Peter absently; and then he pulled himself
together and briefly told Dunbar the whole story.

'It doesn't alter the fact,' said Dunbar, 'that I have got to find him
if I can.'

'No,' said Peter stupidly. 'No, I suppose it does not,' and he added,
in a heavy voice, 'I believe Toffy would like me to look after the boy.'

'The mystery to me is,' said Dunbar, 'how Purvis, as you call him (to
me, of course, he is E. W. Smith), could have got hold of this box of
papers. It may be a fraud yet,' he said truculently, 'and it will
require investigation.'

'I know my mother's writing,' said Peter, 'and Purvis was in the act of
trying to burn the box before we took him off the steamer. It is the
last thing in the world that it would suit him to have about him if he
meant to establish his claim to be the heir.'

'That's so,' said Dunbar thoughtfully.

'The box could not have come out with him when he sailed to Argentine
as a child,' said Peter, 'because the letter is dated long after that.'

'And you say you never saw the man until you met him out here?' Dunbar
went on.

He brought out a notebook from his pocket and began to jot down Peter's
replies.

'No,' said Peter, 'or, if I did, I can't recall where it was. At first
when I saw him he reminded me of some one whom I had met; but
afterwards, when it seemed pretty well established that he was my
brother, both Christopherson and I thought that this vague recollection
of the man, which I mentioned to him, m