"You see, Mrs. Dundyke, one hardly knows how to act, or what to be at," he remarked, after they had talked for some time, and she had related to him the details (always excepting any suspicion she might once have entertained of Mr. Hardcastle) as closely as she could. "Apart from the grief, the concern for your husband personally, it is altogether so awkward an affair, in a business point of view: we don't know whether we are to consider him as dead or alive." She shook her head. "There is little hope that he is alive, sir." "Well, it would really seem like it. But what _can_ have become of him?" "There was the lake, you know." "Yes." A pause. Presently Mr. Knowles went on. "When the letter came from that clergyman--Prattleton, wasn't his name?--saying that Mr. Dundyke was missing, and asking for the particulars of the money we had forwarded to him, we could not understand it. '_Missing!_' cried old Mr. Knowles, who happened to have come to Fenchurch-street that day, 'one talks of a child being missing, but not of a man.' And when Mr. Prattleton's second letter came to us, giving some of the facts, I assure you we could with difficulty give credence to them." "There is one little point I did not know of, sir; the sending to you for a fifty-pound note. My husband told me he was sending for the thirty pounds, but he did not say anything of the other. I cannot think why he sent for it." Mr. Knowles took out his pocket-book. "I happen to have Mr. Dundyke's letter, which was preserved quite accidentally, not being a strictly business one. You see, he only asks for the fifty pounds in a postscript, as if it were an afterthought. In fact, he says as much:" and Mrs. Dundyke's eyes filled as she looked on the well-known characters. "P.S. Upon second thoughts, I doubt whether the 30_l._ will be enough for me. Be so good as to send me a 50_l._ note in addition to it; in halves as the other." "Which accordingly we did," resumed Mr. Knowles, as Mrs. Dundyke returned him the letter. "And that note, you say, has not been traced?" "No, sir, it has not." "Well, it is altogether most strange. Of course whoever found the pocket-book (if the supposition that it was picked up on the bank of the lake be correct) may be keeping the fifty-pound note by him, but the probability is that he would have got rid of it at once, as he did the others." "The most singular point to my mind throughout, sir, is the finding of the pencil-case in Mr. Hardcastle's room," said Mrs. Dundyke. "I can't get over that." "Can't you? It appears to me easily explainable. The supposition that Mr. Dundyke took it out with him that morning must be a mistake. Mr. Hardcastle probably borrowed it from him at breakfast." "I am quite sure, sir, he did not. I saw my husband put the pencil in its place in the pocket-book, and return the pocket-book to his pocket."