"I have nearly worried myself into a lunatic asylum over the matter. I have been away from England for upwards of a year--partly for the sake of Harry here, who has got rid of his box long ago, and now gets along very fairly on sticks, partly to avoid seeing Fred, for as long as this thing was unsettled, it was impossible that I could give him my hand. "My heart has all along been with you, my boy, for you know I loved you as a son; but your silence and your running away were ugly weights in the scale against you. Now that I find that that villain suppressed your letter--for he must have done so, else I should have got it--and that it was he who urged you to fly to get you out of the way, I have no longer a shadow of doubt in my mind. I must tell you that Harry here never doubted you from the first; and as for Alice, she became a veritable little fury when the possibility of your guilt was suggested. We have had some rare battles and rows over that and her absolute refusal to speak to Fred, whom from the first she insisted was at the bottom of it, though how she arrived at that conclusion, except by instinct, is more than I can tell. Her joy when Harry here was found, and of course took the position I had intended for you, and her delight in Fred's discomfiture, were, as I told her several times, absolutely indecent. Not that she minded a farthing; she is the most insubordinate young person I ever came across. You will hardly know her again, Frank, she is growing fast into a young woman, and a very pretty one too." "But how did you find me, uncle? Was it from Mr. Adams that you heard where I was?" "Well, Frank, we advertised for you, for over two years, in the American and Colonial papers, and at last began almost to despair. "About two months ago, when we were in Milan--for we have been wandering about Europe for the last eight or nine months--your friend Adams found us out; the good fellow had been hunting for us for two months." "Ah! that explains why I have not heard from him," Frank interrupted. "I have been looking for a letter for the last two months, and had begun to conclude that as he had nothing pleasant to tell me he had not written, and that I should never hear now." "Then you thought like a young fool," Captain Bayley said angrily. "Well, as soon as Adams had given your message to Alice--and why you should have supposed that Alice should have believed in your innocence any more than me, except that women never will believe what they don't want to believe, I don't know--well, of course, she told us about it at once, and we came back to England and talked it over, and settled that the best thing was for us all to come out and see you." "All!" Frank repeated in surprise.