Mr. Wentworth next wrote to Victor a letter from which a paragraph is extracted:
“I admire your audacity in asking me to let you leave school and go around the world with some scapegrace companion. You say it will only cost two thousand dollars. That probably seems to you a very small sum of money. When I was several years older than yourself I was working for seventy-five dollars a month or nine hundred dollars a year. It is evident that you do not understand the value of money. You speak of me as a rich man, and I admit that you are correct in doing so, but I do not propose to have you make ducks and drakes of my money.
“I may mention, by the way, that a livery stable keeper, who signs himself Seth Kendall, has sent me a bill run up by you for sixty-seven dollars. I have written him that I didn’t authorize your running up such a bill, and that he must be content with fifty per cent of it, or else go unpaid. Hereafter I forbid your running up bills in Illium of any description. Bear this in mind.
“Your father,
“Bradley Wentworth.”
A week later Mr. Wentworth received this telegram from Illium.
“Your son Victor has disappeared, leaving no traces of his destination. Particulars by mail.
“Virgil Mcintire.”