"Where is my father, then?" "On the Continent--we think." "You think? And the--ten thousand pounds?" "He has it with him," said Lowndes, in a low voice. "I'm sorry to say he--bolted with the lot!" CHAPTER III. THE SIN OF THE FATHER. "It's a lie!" The word flew through Harry's teeth as in another century his sword might have flown from its sheath; and so blind was he with rage and horror that he scarcely appreciated its effect on Gordon Lowndes. Never was gross insult more mildly taken. The elder man did certainly change colour for an instant; in another he had turned away with a shrug, and in yet another he was round again with a sad half-smile. Harry glared at him in a growing terror. He saw that he was forgiven; a blow had disconcerted him less. "I expected you to jump down my throat," observed Lowndes, with a certain twitching of the sharp nose which came and went with the intermittent twinkle in his eyes. "It is lucky you are not a younger man, or you would have got even more than you expected!" "For telling you the truth? Well, well, I admire your spirit, Ringrose." "It is not the truth," said Harry doggedly, his chest heaving, and a cold sweat starting from his skin. "I wish to God it were not!" "You mean to tell me my father absconded?" "That is the word I should have used." "With ten thousand pounds that did not belong to him?" "Not exactly that; the money was lent to him, but for another purpose. He has misapplied rather than misappropriated it." Harry felt his head swimming. Disaster he might bear--but disaster rooted in disgrace! He gazed in mute misery upon the stripped but still familiar room; he breathed hard, and the stale odour of his father's cheroots became a sudden agony in his dilated nostrils. Something told him that what he had heard was true. That did not make it easier to believe--on the bare word of a perfect stranger. "Proofs!" he gasped. "What proofs have you? Have you any?" Lowndes produced a pocket-book and extracted a number of newspaper cuttings. "Yes," sighed he, "I have almost everything that has appeared about it in the papers. It will be cruel reading for you, Ringrose; but you may take it better so than from anybody's lips. The accounts in the local press--the creditors' meetings and so forth--are, however, rather long. Hadn't you better wait until we're on our way back to town?" "Wait? No, show me something now! I apologise for what I said; I made use of an unpardonable word; but--I don't believe it yet!" "Here, then," said Lowndes, "if you insist. Here's a single short paragraph from the _P.M.G._ It would appear about the last day in March." "The day I sailed!" groaned Harry. He took the cutting and read as follows:-- THE MISSING IRONMASTER.