ss.

In those days he was calm and cold and, while outwardly scrupulous,
capable of forgetting his honor as a physician under a sufficiently
strong temptation. I had left him when new prospects opened, and in the
years which had elapsed had contented myself with the knowledge that his
shingle still hung out in Yonkers, though his practice was nothing to
what it used to be when I was in his employ. Now I was going to see him
again.

That his was the hand which had stolen Gwendolen seemed no longer open
to doubt. That she was under his care in the curious old house I
remembered in the heart of Yonkers, seemed equally probable; but why so
sordid a man--one who loved money above everything else in the
world--should retain the child one minute after the publication of the
bountiful reward offered by Mr. Ocumpaugh, was what I could not at first
understand. Miss Graham's theory of hate had made no impression on me.
He was heartless and not likely to be turned aside from any project he
had formed, but he was not what I considered vindictive where nothing
was to be gained. Yet my comprehension of him had been but a boy's
comprehension, and I was now prepared to put a very different estimate
on one whose character had never struck me as being an open one, even
when my own had been most credulous.

That my enterprise, even with the knowledge I possessed of this man,
promised well or held out any prospects of easy fulfilment, I no longer
allowed myself to think. If money was his object--and what other could
influence a man of his temperament?--the sum offered by Mr. Ocumpaugh,
large though it was, had apparently not sufficed to satisfy his greed.
He was holding back the child, or so I now believed, in order to wring a
larger, possibly a double, amount from the wretched mother. Fifty
thousand was a goodly sum, but one hundred thousand was better; and this
man had gigantic ideas where his cupidity was concerned. I remember how
firmly he had once stood out for ten thousand dollars when he had been
offered five; and I began to see, though in an obscure way as yet, how
it might very easily be a part of his plan to work Mrs. Ocumpaugh up to
a positive belief in the child's death before he came down upon her for
the immense reward he had fixed his heart upon. The date he had written
all over the place might thus find some explanation in a plan to weaken
her nerve before pressing his exorbitant claims upon her.

Nothing was clear, yet