"That same night he drove Jeff to the station at Kennisburg. The Washington express does not stop at Lambert Junction, and anyway Kennisburg is a bigger station and travellers excite less comment. This isn't deduction; it's fact. I rode to Kennisburg this morning and proved it. The station man remembers selling Radnor Gaylord a ticket to Washington in the middle of the night about three weeks ago. Some man who waited outside and whose face the agent did not see, boarded the train, and Rad drove off alone. The ticket seller does not know Rad personally but he knows him by sight--so much for that. Rad came home and went to bed. When he came down stairs in the morning he was met by the information that the ha'nt had robbed the safe. You can see what instantly jumped into his mind--some way, somehow, Jeff had taken those bonds--and yet figure on it as he might, he could not see how it was possible. The robbery seemed to have occurred while he was away. Could Jeff merely have pretended to leave? Might he have slipped off the train again and come back? Those are the questions that were bothering Radnor. He was honest in saying that he could not imagine how the bonds had been stolen, and yet he was also honest in not wanting to know the truth." "He might have confided in me," I said. "It would have been a good deal better if he had. But in order to understand Rad's point of view, you must take into account Jeff's character. He appears to have been a reckless, dashing, headstrong, but exceedingly attractive fellow. His father put up with his excesses for six years before the final quarrel. Cat-Eye Mose, so old Jake tells me, moped for months after his disappearance. Rad, as a little fellow, worshipped his bad but charming brother.--There you have it. Jeff turns up again with a hard luck story, and Mose and Radnor both go back to their old allegiance. "Jeff is in a bad hole, a fugitive from justice with the penitentiary waiting for him. He confesses the whole thing to Radnor--extenuating circumstances plausibly to the fore. He has been dishonest, but unintentionally so. He wishes to straighten up and lead a respectable life. If he had, say fifteen hundred dollars, he could quash the indictment against him. He is Radnor's brother and the Colonel's son, but Rad is to receive a fortune while he is to be disinherited. The money he asks now is only his right. If he receives it he will disappear and trouble Rad no more.--That, I fancy, is the line of argument our returned prodigal used. Anyway, he won Rad over. Radnor was thinking of getting married, had plenty of use for all the money he could lay his hands on, but he seems to be a generous chap, and he sacrificed himself.