"You had the right," he said. "But remember what I was--just a lonely grub. Till Penelope came to me I had nothing but the mills. Having her, I wanted her entirely." He held out his hand. "She was only that high, David, and I was getting gray. I never looked at her but there came into my mind another just that high who had a desk in school in front of mine, and sometimes I seemed to be looking again over the top of my spelling-book at the same bright hair and the same bobbing bit of ribbon. Can't you see what she meant to me, David? She hated me at first--she spoke always of her father and of you--and I was jealous." "I understand," said I. He had not spoken of the letters. There was no need of it. I knew that they were in his mind and that he was perfectly conscious of the pettiness of his action. But for me his simple confession had absolved him. "I wanted her entirely," he went on, throwing himself into a chair at my side. "I wanted something to live for beside the mills. In Penelope I found it. What the mills gave me was for her. Every hour I worked was happier because it was for her good. Sometimes I have to fight against a dread that Hendry will come back and take her from me, and yet when I think of him, tumbling around the world alone, I want him too--want him in that very chair you are sitting in. It would be so good just to hear him talk, and it wouldn't make any difference to us now if he did just talk." Rufus Blight brought a fist down on the arm of his chair. "David, I must find him!" "He went to Tibet," said I. "To the South Seas, to the Arctic, to Tibet--everywhere, David. His trail has led me all over the world. I can never catch up to him. The Philadelphia man you told me of--Harassan--dead three years. My secretary, Mallencroft, has found that in San Francisco a man named Henderson worked on _The Press_ there, but only two men remembered him. They said he was erratic, always in trouble by writing things contrary to the paper's policy, and gave up in disgust, to ship as supercargo on a vessel trading in the South Seas. He wrote a book after that, but the publishers failed, and Mallencroft couldn't even find a copy of it. That must have been about the time you saw him--when he lectured on 'Life.' Poor old Hendry! It's his pride, his confounded pride--that's the trouble." I had risen. Rufus Blight came to me and laid a hand on each of my shoulders. What a change since that day long ago! He had to reach up to me, and I looked down into his face. "You'll think me a strange fellow, David. I didn't mean to tell you so much, but it just would come out when I saw that you understood. We must find him--you and I. We may find him any day; at this very minute he may be going by the Old Grub's door. Watch for him."