For a minute or two Zack was silent after this answer. As soon as he began to speak again, his companion shook his arm--a little impatiently, this time--and stopped him. “Drop it,” said Mat peremptorily. “Don’t let’s talk no more, my head--” “Anything wrong with your head?” asked Zack. Mat rose to his feet again. A change began to appear in his face. The flash that had tinged it from the first, deepened palpably, and spread up to the very rim of his black skull-cap. A confusion and dimness seemed to be stealing over his eyes, a thickness and heaviness to be impeding his articulation when he spoke again. “I’ve overdone it with the brandy,” he said, “my head’s getting hot under the place where they scalped me. Give me holt of my hat, and show me a light, Zack. I can’t stop indoors no longer. Don’t talk! Let me out of the house at once.” Young Thorpe took up the candle directly; and leading the way down-stairs, let him out into the street by the private door, not venturing to irritate him by saying anything, but waiting on the door-step, and watching him with great curiosity as he started for his walk. He was just getting out of sight, when Zack heard him stop, and strike his stick on the pavement. In less than a minute he had turned, and was back again at the door of the tobacconist’s shop. “Zack,” he whispered, “you ask about among your friends if any of ‘em ever knowed a man with that name I told you of.” “Do you mean the _‘Arthur Carr’_ you were talking about just now?” inquired young Thorpe. “Yes; _Arthur Carr,”_ said Mat, very earnestly. Then, turning away before Zack could ask him any more questions, he disappeared rapidly this time in the darkness of the street. CHAPTER XIII. THE SEARCH FOR ARTHUR CARR. Mr. Blyth was astir betimes on the morning after Mat and young Thorpe had visited him in the studio. Manfully determined not to give way an inch to his own continued reluctance to leave home, he packed up his brushes and colors, and started on his portrait-painting tour by the early train which he had originally settled to travel by. Although he had every chance of spending his time, during his absence, agreeably as well as profitably, his inexplicable sense of uneasiness at being away from home, remained with him even on the railway; defying all the exhilarating influences of rapid motion and change of scene, and oppressing him as inveterately as it had oppressed him the night before. Bad, however, as his spirits now were, they would have been much worse, if he had known of two remarkable domestic events, which it had been the policy of his household to keep strictly concealed from him on the day of his departure.