In common with all his sex, he liked and trusted Lettice at sight, without bestowing on her a passing thought as a person capable of provoking any warmer feeling. She was the perfect sister—that he felt as instinctively as everybody else—and a woman to trust into the bargain. It would be cruel and quite unnecessary to hide anything from that fine and unselfish face. So he let her lead him to a little artificial cave, lined and pungent with pitch-pine, over against the rhododendrons, while she went to fetch her father quietly from the house. The ironmaster amplified the excuses already made for him; he had rushed for the first train after getting his daughter’s telegram, leaving but a line for Thrush with his telephone number, in the hopes that he would use it whether he had anything to report or not. “As you didn’t,” added Mr. Upton, in a still aggrieved voice, “I’ve been trying again and again to ring you up instead; but of course you were never there, nor your man Mullins either. I was coming back by the last train, however, and should have been with you late to-night.” “Did you leave the motor behind?” “Yes; it’ll be there to meet me at St. Pancras.” “It may have to do more than that,” said Thrush, spreading his full breadth on the pitch-pine seat. “I’ve found out something; how much or how little it’s too soon to tell; but I wasn’t going to discuss it through a dozen country exchanges as long as you wanted the thing a dead secret, Mr. Upton, and that’s why I didn’t ring you up. As for your last train, I’d have waited to meet it in town, only that wouldn’t have given me time to say what I’ve got to say before one or other of us may have to rush off somewhere else by another last train.” “Do for God’s sake say what you’ve got to say!” cried Mr. Upton. “Well, I’ve seen a man who thinks he may have seen the boy!” “Alive?” “And perfectly well—but for his asthma—on Thursday.” The ironmaster thanked God in a dreadful voice; it was Lettice who calmed him, not he her. Her eyes only shone a little, but his were blinded by the first ray of light. “Where was it?” he asked, when he could ask anything. “I’ll tell you in a minute. I want first to be convinced that it really was your son. Did the boy take any special interest in Australia?” “Rather!” cried Lettice, the sister of three boys. “What kind of interest?” “He wanted to go out there. It had just been talked about.” She looked at her father. “I wouldn’t let him go,” he said. “Why?” “I want to know just how it came to be talked about.” “A fool of a doctor in town recommended it.” Lettice winced, but Thrush nodded as though that tallied. “Did he recommend any particular vessel?” “Yes, a sailing ship—the _Seringapatam_— an old East Indiaman they’ve turned into a kind of floating hospital. I wouldn’t hear of the beastly tub.” “Do you know when she was to sail?” “I did know,” said Lettice. “I believe it was just about now.”