'Maybe Mark Wylder is mad, and wandering in charge of a keeper; maybe he is in some mad doctor's house, and not mad; maybe in England, and there writes these letters which are sent from one continental town to another to be posted, and thus the appearance of locomotion is kept up. Perhaps he has been inveigled into the hands of ruffians, and is living as it were under the vault of an Inquisition, and compelled to write what ever his gaolers dictate. Maybe he writes not under physical but moral coercion. Be the fact how it may, those Lakes, brother and sister, have a guilty knowledge of the affair.
'I will be firm—it is my duty to clear this matter up, if I can—we must do as we would be done by.'
CHAPTER LI.
A FRACAS IN THE LIBRARY.
It was still early in the day. Larcom received him gravely in the hall. Captain Lake was at home, as usual, up to one o'clock in the library—the most diligent administrator that Brandon had perhaps ever known.
'Well, Larkin—letters, letters perpetually, you see. Quite well, I hope? Won't you sit down—no bad news? You look rather melancholy. Your other client is not ill—nothing sad about Mark Wylder, I hope?'
'No—nothing sad, Captain Lake—nothing—but a good deal that is strange.'
'Oh, is there?' said Lake, in his soft tones, leaning forward in his easy chair, and looking on the shining points of his boots.
'I have found out a thing, Captain Lake, which will no doubt interest you as much as it does me. It will lead, I think, to a much more exact guess about Mr. Mark Wylder.'
There was a sturdy emphasis in the attorney's speech which was far from usual, and indicated something.