“I am to blame for all this,” he protested firmly. “If my father is dead, I am accountable for his death. Whatever his present condition may be, I am responsible for it. Don’t put all the blame on that gypsy fortune-teller. I should have realized the state of mind he was in and I should have given up everything else in the world to help him weather the next year or so of doubt and distress. I laughed at his fears. I did not understand how real they were to him. He wanted me here where he could watch over me. Mr. Sage believes he has buried himself in some out-of-the-way place where he can’t even hear what happens to me between now and my thirtieth birthday. Uncle Joe Sikes says he got cold feet—couldn’t stand the gaff. That’s another way of looking at it. In either case, I honestly believe he will come back in his own good time. And when he does come home he must find me here, carrying on the business as well as I know how. I will do more than that. I’ll drain part of our bally old swamp and make it worth fifty dollars an acre to him instead of the dreary waste he bought for a song. And I sha’n’t stop looking for him—not for a single minute. It’s all right to be optimistic, it’s all right to assume that he is safe and well somewhere, that he knows what he is about, and all that. The reverse may be the case—so I mean to find him if it is humanly possible to do so.” Joseph Sikes and Silas Link lamented and at the same time excoriated old Oliver Baxter. For a while the latter spoke of his old friend as “the deceased,” being in no doubt at all as to his fate, but, as time went on and the “remains” continued to elude the most diligent of searchers, he was forced to admit that perhaps everybody else was right and he was wrong. Accepting the increased burden of responsibility resulting from old Oliver’s defection, the two “guardians” devoted themselves, without a murmur of complaint, to the supervision of Oliver October’s private and personal affairs. It was a duty that could not be shirked—a charge bequeathed to them, so to speak, by the figuratively demised Mr. Baxter. They had little or no support from Mr. Sage; and when they complained to Serepta Grimes about the minister’s lack of interest in the young man, that excellent manager shocked them by declaring that if they bothered her with any more of that nonsense she would give them a piece of her mind and a kettle full of boiling water besides.