"When did Louis go into town?"
"Several days ago. He has a way of disappearing suddenly, not giving the family an idea of where he is going or when he expects to return, and when he does get back he shows to any one who is not blind, that he has been pretty low down."
"They expect him back to-morrow?"
"Why, as to that, they have been expecting him ever since he went away. I heard Miss Alice say that he went unexpectedly, leaving word that he should probably be back to dinner."
"Harry, my boy, I am almost inclined to think that I ought to start out to-night, and try to look him up."
"To-night! Why, Uncle Harold, how could you? It would be midnight and after before you could reach the city, and then where would you go? The addresses that Miss Alice can give you must be respectable places, with closed doors to-night."
"That is true," Mr. Chessney answered, after a thoughtful pause; "it would be a wild kind of proceeding, apparently, with very little excuse; and yet I am someway impressed that it is the thing to do."
Alas for the Christian world which believes in theory, that there is a direct link between the seen and the unseen, by which the earnest soul can be told in what way to walk, and, in practice, thinks it must search out its own way! Mr. Chessney did not go out in search of his friend. He did not even ask his Master whether it was his will that the apparently "wild proceeding" should be attempted. He prayed, it is true; and he prayed for Louis Ansted, but only in a general way; and he retired to rest, saying within himself that directly after breakfast he would go into town and see what he could do.
Before he was awake the next morning, the piazza of the little country hotel, where he stopped, was filled with loungers who had something unusual and exciting to talk about. There were a dozen different stories, it is true; but out of them all the interested listener could glean certain things which were painfully likely to be facts. There had been a runaway—to that all parties agreed; and Louis Ansted had been in the carriage, and had been thrown; but whether he was killed, or only seriously hurt, or whether the horse had taken fright at the approaching train, or whether the driver had attempted to cross the railroad-track in the face of the train, or whether there had been any train at all, authorities differed. It was still early when Harry Matthews knocked at his uncle's door with the confused particles of story.