Billie sat on a stone fallen from the ruined walls and rested her chin in her hand. She was thinking and thinking.
“Feargus,” she said at last, “we don’t want to help you do anything dishonest and wicked——”
Feargus flushed. But the honest light in his blue eyes never wavered.
“I believe that what has been done is right,” he said, “but I can’t say anything more——”
“Come, Billie,” called Miss Campbell’s voice from the other side of the wall.
The four friends shook hands with the Irish boy. It was impossible to connect anything criminal and wicked with his honest, good-natured face.
“It’s a shame,” whispered Billie to Nancy, as she guided the “Comet” through the wild scenery along the third lake, some time later in the day. “The Duke of Kilkenty is like a wicked magician who turns everything wrong and crooked that could just as easily be straight and right.”
But of course she had no way in the world to know that the Duke of Kilkenty was at that moment engaged in dictating a number of letters to his secretary, which so surprised that young man, that it was with difficulty he grasped his pencil. The police were to give up all search for young O’Connor; detectives were to be withdrawn from the case. The Duke had other means of finding his son. A firm of architects were to send men down to discuss building model cottages; Father O’Toole was to call and see him at once. And still the list was not nearly attended to.
CHAPTER XXII.—HOW A DRIVE IN A JAUNTING CAR ENDED IN A MOTOR TRIP.
It was near a small village toward the west coast of Ireland where Elinor’s relatives lived, and the first impression of the straggling, cobble-paved street flanked with wretched hovels was hardly cheerful.