'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?'