ut eventually, when they had
borrowed from him a considerable sum--some thousands of pounds--for
a deal which was to be carried through within a couple of days, they
decamped with the money, and completely disappeared, leaving your father
to bear the consequences. You may easily understand what followed.
The money which Brake had lent them was the bank's money. The bank
unexpectedly came down on him for his balance, the whole thing was
found out, and he was prosecuted. He had no defence--he was, of course,
technically guilty--and he was sent to penal servitude."

Ransford had dreaded the telling of this but Mary made no sign, and Dick
only rapped out a sharp question.

"He hadn't meant to rob the bank for himself, anyway, had he?" he asked.

"No, no! not at all!" replied Ransford hastily. "It was a bad error
of judgment on his part, Dick, but he--he'd relied on these men, more
particularly on Wraye, who'd been the leading spirit. Well, that was
your father's sad fate. Now we come to what happened to your mother and
yourselves. Just before your father's arrest, when he knew that all was
lost, and that he was helpless, he sent hurriedly for me and told me
everything in your mother's presence. He begged me to get her and you
two children right away at once. She was against it; he insisted. I took
you all to a quiet place in the country, where your mother assumed her
maiden name. There, within a year, she died. She wasn't a strong woman
at any time. After that--well, you both know pretty well what has been
the run of things since you began to know anything. We'll leave that,
it's nothing to do with the story. I want to go back to your father. I
saw him after his conviction. When I had satisfied him that you and your
mother were safe, he begged me to do my best to find the two men who had
ruined him. I began that search at once. But there was not a trace of
them--they had disappeared as completely as if they were dead. I used
all sorts of means to trace them--without effect. And when at last your
father's term of imprisonment was over and I went to see him on his
release, I had to tell him that up to that point all my efforts had been
useless. I urged him to let the thing drop, and to start life afresh.
But he was determined. Find both men, but particularly Wraye, he would!
He refused point-blank to even see his children until he had found these
men and had forced them to acknowledge their misdeeds as regards him,
for that