Young Layton pressed Quackinboss's hand, and whispered, “Thank Heaven for it!”
If Winthrop laughed heartily at an escape that struck him as so cleverly effected, the doctor, far more eager in pursuit than the others, passed into the house to interrogate the people,—learn when and how and in what direction they had fled, and trace, if so it might be, the cause of this sudden departure.
“See,” cried he, as the others entered the drawing-room,—“see what a sudden retreat it has been! They were at their coffee; here is her shawl, too, just as she may have thrown it off; and here a heap of papers and letters, half burned, on the hearth.”
“One thing is clear enough,” said Alfred; “they discovered that they had lost the battle, and they have abandoned the field.”
“What do I see here?” cried the doctor, as he picked up a half-burned sheet of paper from the mass. “This is my own writing—my application to the Patent Office, when I was prosecuting my discovery of corrugated steel! When and how could it have come here?”
“Who can 'My dear father' be?” asked Quackinboss, examining a letter which he had lifted from the floor. “Oh, here's his name: 'Captain Nicholas Holmes'—”
“Nick Holmes!” exclaimed the doctor; “the fellow who stole my invention, and threw me into a madhouse! What of him? Who writes to him as 'dear father'?”
“Our widow, no less,” said the Colonel. “It is a few lines to say she is just setting out for Florence, and will be with him within the week.”
“And this scoundrel was her father!” muttered the old doctor. “Only think of all the scores that we should have had to settle if we had had the luck to be here an hour ago! I thrashed him once in the public streets, it's true, but we are far from being quits yet. Come, let's lose no time, but after them at once.”
Alfred made no reply, but turned a look on Quackinboss, as thongh to bespeak his interference.