"And how about the daughter?" Trove inquired.
"Run away and nowhere to be found," was the answer of the other young man. "I've told you bad news enough, but there's more, and you ought to know it all. Louis Leblanc is in Quebec, and he says that a clock tinker lent him money with which to leave the States."
"It was I, an' God bring him to repentance—the poor beggar!" said Darrel. "He agreed to repay me within a fortnight an' was in sore distress, but he ran away, an' I got no word o' him."
"Well, the inference is, that you, being a friend of the accused, were trying to help him."
"I'm caught in a web," said Trove, leaning forward, his head upon his hands, "and Leblanc's wife is the spider. How about the money? Have they been able to identify it?"
"In part, yes; there's one bill that puzzles them. It's that of an old bank in New York City that failed years ago and went out of business."
Then a moment of silence and that sound of the clocks—like footsteps of a passing caravan, some slow and heavy, some quick, as if impatient to be gone.
"Ye speeding seconds!" said Darrel, as he crossed to the bench.
"Still thy noisy feet."
Then he walked up and down, thinking.
The friend of Sidney Trove put on his hat and stood by the door.