one single word about them. Harker asked if he could do
anything--Brake's answer was that no one was to concern himself. He
preserved an obstinate silence on that point. The clergyman in
whose family Mrs. Brake had been governess saw Brake, after his
conviction--Brake would say nothing to him. Of Mrs. Brake, nothing more
is known--to me at any rate. What was known at the time is this--Brake
communicated to all who came in contact with him, just then, the idea
of a man who has been cruelly wronged and deceived, who takes refuge in
sullen silence, and who is already planning and cherishing--revenge!"

"Aye, aye!" muttered Mitchington. "Revenge?--just So!"

"Brake, then," continued Bryce, "goes off to his term of penal
servitude, and so disappears--until he reappears here in Wrychester.
Leave him for a moment, and go back. And--it's a going back, no doubt,
to supposition and to theory--but there's reason in what I shall
advance. We know--beyond doubt--that Brake had been tricked and
deceived, in some money matter, by some man--some mysterious man--whom
he referred to as having been his closest friend. We know, too, that
there was extraordinary mystery in the disappearance of his wife and
children. Now, from all that has been found out, who was Brake's closest
friend? Ransford! And of Ransford, at that time, there's no trace. He,
too, disappeared--that's a fact which I've established. Years later, he
reappears--here at Wrychester, where he's bought a practice. Eventually
he has two young people, who are represented as his wards, come to live
with him. Their name is Bewery. The name of the young woman whom John
Brake married was Bewery. What's the inference? That their mother's
dead--that they're known under her maiden name: that they, without a
shadow of doubt, are John Brake's children. And that leads up to my
theory--which I'll now tell you in confidence--if you wish for it."

"It's what I particularly wish for," observed Jettison quietly. "The
very thing!"

"Then, it's this," said Bryce. "Ransford was the close friend who
tricked and deceived Brake:

"He probably tricked him in some money affair, and deceived him in his
domestic affairs. I take it that Ransford ran away with Brake's wife,
and that Brake, sooner than air all his grievance to the world, took
it silently and began to concoct his ideas of revenge. I put the
whole thing this way. Ransford ran away with Mrs. Brake and the two
children--mere infants--and