'Of course the chain of evidence may be perfectly simple. Purvis has probably got hold of the name of whoever it was that brought Edward here, and has traced him somewhere, and has got the whole story from him. My mother had always an unlimited supply of money; she could have settled a large sum on the people who looked after him, and of course it is evident that some money must have been paid, though the lawyers could find no trace of it amongst her papers. The only other hypothesis is that it is a case of some extraordinary aberration of memory, and that, the child she disliked having been removed, she forgot about him altogether. All my life I never remember hearing him mentioned; and as my mother did not return to Bowshott until I was nearly eight years old, very little may have been said to her that would recall the fact of the boy's death. 'It is the beastly uncertainty of it,' he continued, as he rode slowly home on the dusty track which was the apology for a road across the camp. 'If the estate pays me sufficient to live upon I needn't grumble; but Purvis must give me an account of what he has been doing, and put me in possession of the facts of the case. One always distrusts the middleman, and wonders if he is making a good bargain on both sides. A small man like Purvis always tries to be important, and to make every one believe that he alone holds the key to mysteries, and that no one can get on without him. I don't at present see how he can defraud either me or my brother, even if he wants to; but I am not going to be content with hints or suggestions, as if I were living in a penny novelette.' He rode slowly home through the heat that rose like a palpable gas from the scorched ground, until the little estancia house hove in sight again. He found that Toffy and Ross were still enjoying their afternoon siesta. There was not a bit of shade anywhere, and the heat seemed to burn through the roof until the very floor was hot to walk upon. His thoughts went back to Purvis in his tweed clothes and the bowler bat with the pugaree on it, and he wondered how he fared in the scorching heat. Probably the anaemic little man hardly knew what it was to be too hot. He used to ride over the camp when even the peons did not show their heads out of doors, and his hands were always cold and damp to the touch. Peter drank some tea and sat down at little Mrs. Chance's writing-table in the drawing-room, and wrote to Jane. There was a feeling of storm in the air, and he envied the two men sleeping luxuriously in the corridor. 'When you have been out here a year or two,' said the sleepy voice of Ross from the depths of a long cane chair, 'you will find that letters are not only impossible but unnecessary. No one expects to hear from one after the first month or two, and if one did write there would be nothing to say.'