[Illustration: He pleaded eloquently to be taken with us.] In the afternoon, when I was doing a little scale work preparatory to cooking, a messenger from the hotel drove up with a note from Silvia which I read aloud: "Ptolemy has been missing for twenty-four hours. We are in hopes he has joined you. If not, what shall I do?" "We'll go back with you," said Rob to the man. "Just lend a hand here and help us pull up these tent stakes." "What's Ptolemy to me or I to him?" I asked with a groan, "can't we give him absent treatment?" "You're positively inhuman, Lucien," protested Rob. "The boy may be at the bottom of the lake." "Not he! He was born to be hung." All this time, however, I had been active in making preparations for departure, as I knew that Silvia would feel that we were responsible for Ptolemy's safety, and her anxiety was reason enough for me to hasten to her. Rob was quite jubilant on our return trip and declared that the fish came too easily and too plentifully to make it real sport, but I felt that I had another grudge to be charged up to the fateful family. We found Silvia pale from anxiety, Beth in tears, and Diogenes loudly clamoring for "Tolly." We learned that the afternoon before, Silvia and Beth had gone with the landlady for a ride, leaving Diogenes in Ptolemy's care, but on their return at dinner time, Diogenes was playing alone in the sandpile. Nothing was thought of Ptolemy's absence until bedtime, and they had then sent out searching parties to the woods and the lake shores. Finally it occurred to Beth that he might have gone to join Rob and me, so they sent the messenger to investigate. "He must be lost in the woods somewhere," said Beth tearfully, "and he will starve to death." Rob actually touched her hand in his distress at her grief. "Ptolemy is too smart to get lost anywhere," I declared. "He knows fully as much about woodcraft as he does about every other kind of craft. He's one of his mother's antiquities personified. But haven't you been able to find anyone who saw him after you went for your ride?" "No; even the hotel help were all out on the lake." "And he left Diogenes here, absolutely unguarded?" "Well!" admitted Silvia, "he tied Diogenes to a tree near the sandpile." "Then he must have gone away with malice aforethought," I said, "and Diogenes is the only one who knows anything about his last movements." I lifted the child to my knee, and speaking more gently to him than I had ever done, I asked: "Di, did you and Tolly play in the sandpile yesterday?" He was quite emphatic in his affirmative. "Well, tell Ocean: Did Tolly go away and leave you?" "Tolly goed away," he confirmed. "Oh, Lucien!" protested Beth, laughing. "He's too little to know what you are talking about or to remember." "Lucien's ruling passion strong in death," murmured Rob. "He can't help cross-examining the cradle even!"