A nasty run, indeed! But it would be much worse going back again, leaving the house of cards, which I had come so far to see, lying in ruins behind me. Still, I continued to beat into my brains the fact that I rejoiced in poor old Farnham's safety. "I believe I am a bit knocked out," I said, "though I ought to be able to stand a trifle like that and think nothing of it. I should be glad to see Mr. Farnham. I suppose such an old friend as I might venture to call in on him, even though he isn't feeling as fit as I should like to think him. If he's not likely to turn up here presently I might drive to the house, and he'd give me breakfast, I daresay." I saw before I had finished my second sentence that Bennett was slightly disturbed. He flushed to the roots of his flaxen hair, and his face wore an expression which betrayed a suppressed desire to whistle. "You can bet he would give you breakfast, or anything else he had, Mr. Stanton," the trusted man of business said heartily, yet with a certain irresolution. "But the fact is, he ain't at the house this morning. He's gone away again." "I thought he was unwell," I interpolated, in surprise. "That's so. He's a sick man, not hardly fit to be about, but for all that he's off. He ought to be back again in--well, in a few days, however." "A few days!" I echoed. "More or less. By George! he will be mad when he knows he's kept you waiting. For, of course, you _will_ wait, won't you, Mr. Stanton?" "I should certainly like to see him before I go back to the East," I said; and I spoke no more than the truth, for, putting my cordial feeling for Farnham out of the question, it might be that valuable information concerning Wildred's past could be wrested from him with due diplomacy. "Still, I hardly feel like hanging about Denver for an indefinite length of time, doing nothing. I shouldn't mind a little journey, as I've come so far. If he's at any of the Colorado mines, perhaps I might run out and join him; I've been there with him before, you may remember." "You might indeed, sir," returned Bennett, still embarrassed, "if he was in any such place, which he isn't. To tell you the plain truth, Mr. Stanton, as I'm sure Mr. Farnham would wish, if he could dream it was _you_ I was talking to, why, this little journey of his is strictly on the 'Q. T.' I guess from what he said there's a lady mixed up in it." Exactly what Wildred had said, when explaining his friend's absence on Christmas Day from the House by the Lock! I remembered the coincidence, though I could hardly see that it bore with any importance on the present case. Farnham might hold several feminine trump cards to play at the end of a trick for all I knew, or had a right to know.