frightful thing! Yes, yes, that
explains the mark on your throat. Their object must have been robbery.
What have they stolen from you, Haydon?" But the mystery now deepened.
Jack's watch and chain, his purse, everything he had worth stealing,
were perfectly safe and untouched. Suddenly Jack started up and thrust
his hand into his pocket. "The letter! the letter!" he cried. He drew
out several letters and looked over them. "My father's letter has
gone!" he said.

"What's that?" said Colonel Keppel, pointing to a sheet of paper
fluttering over the heath about thirty yards away. He ran and fetched
it. "This is the letter," said Jack, "the letter I received from my
father this morning."

"But what an extraordinary thing that you should be attacked in this
manner, Haydon, in order that this man may read a private letter. Is
there anything in it, may I ask, to explain such a strange
proceeding?"

"Nothing, sir, that I know of; nothing in the least. My father says
nothing there but what anyone may see. I beg that you and Colonel
Keppel will glance over it; you will then see how ordinary it is."

The two gentlemen demurred, but Jack insisted, and they ran their eyes
over what Mr. Haydon had written. "Purely and simply an ordinary
letter from a father abroad to his son," said the Doctor; "it seems
madness to go to such lengths to gain a glimpse of such a letter."

"All the same, young Haydon was quite right in not giving up his
father's note to such rogues to read, whatever their purpose may have
been," remarked the Colonel.

"Oh, quite so, quite so," agreed Dr. Lawrence. "They had no right
whatever to see his private correspondence. By the way, Haydon, I see
your father is on his way home. This is posted at Cairo. In what part
of the East has he been staying lately?"

"He has been in Burmah for some time, sir," replied Jack, "but I do
not know exactly what he has been doing. I rather fancy he went out to
survey some ruby-mines for a big London firm."

"Quite so," said the Doctor, "I have seen him referred to many times
as a famous ruby expert."

At this moment Colonel Keppel came towards them with something in his
hand. He had started away after concluding his last speech, and had
gone in the direction where he had seen the letter fluttering. Now he
was returning.

"Here is something they dropped, something which throws a flood of
light on the affair in one way, and makes it much stranger in
another," he remarked