"It isn't that, you know," urged Sir Luke, rather feebly. "My reasons are different. I don't want him to come here and play ducks and drakes with what I have taken a lifetime to build up--and not easily either-- and to bring scandal on my name and memory. That's what it amounts to." "That's what you are trying to persuade yourself into thinking it amounts to, but you can't humbug me, old friend. My advice to you therefore is to lock that draft away, or better still, put it in the fire, and leave things as they are." "You mean with Hilary as my heir?" "Just that. I have, however, a suggestion to append. Find out Hilary; not necessarily directly, but find out about him--where he is and what doing. The fact that he has never applied to you for help, is, as I said before, a point in his favour. He may have carved out a position for himself--may be of use in the world by his life and example. Anyway, give him a chance." "But if I find just the reverse? What if I find him a thoroughly hardened and disreputable scamp?" "Then I have nothing further to urge. But somehow I have an instinct that you will find him nothing of the sort." A perceptible brightening came over the old man's face. The priest had struck the right chord in saying that Hilary Blachland had been to his friend rather as an only son than as a nephew, and now the thought of having him at his side again was apparent in the lighting up of his face. Then his countenance fell again. "It's all very well to say `Find out Hilary,'" he said. "But how is it to be done? We last heard of him from South Africa. He was trading in the interior with the natives. Seemed to like the life and could make a little at it." "Well, there you are. You can soon find out about him. Although covering a vast area in the vague region geographically defined as South Africa, the European population is one of those wherein everybody knows everybody else, or something about them. Send Percival out. The trip would do him a world of good. You need not tell him its precise object in every particular, I mean of course that he is sent out there to report. But let him know that he is to find Hilary, and he will throw himself into it heart and soul. Then his indirect report will tell us all we want to know." "By Jove, Canon, that is sound judgment, and I'll act upon it!" cried Sir Luke eagerly. "What on earth are your people about that they don't make you a Cardinal Archbishop? Send Percival! Why, that'll be the very thing. I shall miss the boy though, while he's away, but oh, confound it, yes--I would like to see that other scamp again before I die. Here--this can go in the fire," throwing the draft document into the grate and stirring it up with the poker to make it burn. "We'll send Percival. Ha! That sounds like his step. Shall we say anything to him now about it? Yes. Here he is." CHAPTER TWO. A WAFT OF STRANGE NEWS.