These tales have all had their charm, much as they have lacked probability. Each and all they rest upon the single fact that the man was never seen dead. There is, of course, no way of being sure that John Orth perished in the hurricane-swept Straits of Magellan, but it is beyond reasonable question that he did not survive. For he would certainly have answered the pitiful appeals of his old mother, to whom he was devoted, and to whom he had written every few days whenever he had been separated from her. He would have been found by the papal missionaries in some part of the world, and the three vessels sent upon his final course must surely have discovered some trace of the man. It should be remembered that, except for letters that were traced back to harmless cranks, nothing that even looked like a communication was ever received from Orth or Ludmilla Stübel, or from any member of the crew of the _Santa Margarita_. In the light of cold criticism this great enigma is not profound. All evidence and all reason point to the probability that Johann Salvator and his ship went down to darkness in some wild torment of waters and winds, leaving neither wreck nor flotsam to mark their exit, but only a void in which the idle minds of romantics could spin their fabulations. IV THE STOLEN CONWAY BOY At half past ten o’clock on the morning of August 16, 1897, a small, barefoot boy appeared in Colonia Street, in the somnolent city of Albany, the capital of New York State. He carried a crumpled letter in one grimy hand and stopped at one door after another, inquiring where Mrs. Conway lived. The Albany neighbors paid so little attention to him that several of them later estimated his age at from ten years to seventeen. Finally he rang the bell at No. 99 and handed his note to the woman he sought, the wife of Michael J. Conway, a railroad train dispatcher. With that he was gone. Mrs. Conway, a little puzzled at the receipt of a letter by a special messenger, tore open the envelope, sat down in the big rocking chair in her front room, and began to read this appalling communication: “Mr. Conway: Your little boy John has been kidnaped and when you receive this word, he will be a safe distance from Albany and where he could not be found in a hundred years. Your child will be returned to you on payment of _three thousand dollars_, $3000, _provided_ you pay the money _to-day and strictly obey the following directions_: “put the money in a package and send it by a man you can depend on to the lane going up the hill a few feet south of the _Troy road first tollgate_, just off the road on this lane here is a tree with a big trunk have the man put the package on the _south_ side of the tree and _at once come away and come back to your house_. “We want the money left at this spot at _exactly 8:15 o’clock to-night_. “See that no one is with the man you send and that no one follows him or you will _never look upon your little boy again_