so."

"Because he isn't happy," returned his sister, with a gesture toward
the study where Cousin Jasper, distraught, worried, and forlorn, must
even then be sitting alone.

"But why isn't he happy? There is everything here that he could wish
for." Oliver added somewhat bitterly, after a pause: "Why don't
grown-up people tell us things? It is miserable to be old enough to
notice when affairs go wrong but not to be old enough to have them
explained."

"Perhaps," said Janet hopefully, "we will be able to prove that we
deserve to know. I think that you will, anyway, and then you can tell
me."

It was not only the younger members of the household who were
struggling with mystery that night, however. Before they had been
reading many minutes, there came a discreet tap at the door and
Hotchkiss appeared upon the threshold. Oliver was wondering what a boy
unused to butlers was supposed to say or do on the occasion of such a
visit, and even Janet, better at guessing the etiquette of such
matters, seemed at a loss. And so also was Hotchkiss, as it presently
began to be evident.

If the butler had been of the regulation variety, he might perhaps
have known how to ask a few respectful questions without a change of
his professional countenance and have gained his information without
betraying its significance. But as it was, he had for the moment put
off the wooden, expressionless face that he was supposed to wear at
his work, and was openly anxious and disturbed.

"We're troubled about Mr. Peyton, Mrs. Brown and I," he began, coming
frankly to the point at once. "He had a queer visitor to-day, one who
has just been coming lately and who always leaves him upset. I wonder
if you saw him, a thin man with a brown face and a kind of a way with
him, somehow, in spite of his bad clothes."

"Did he drive a shambling old horse?" inquired Oliver, remembering
suddenly the person he had noticed on the road, "and a wagon that
rattled as though it were twenty years old? Yes, we both saw him."

"Had you ever seen him before?" Hotchkiss asked eagerly, and seemed
disappointed when Oliver replied:

"No, we had never laid eyes on him before to-day."

"It is just in the last few weeks that he has been coming here so
often," the man went on. "Before that he came rarely and we didn't
think so much about him. I can remember the first time I saw him, soon
after I had come to Mr. Peyton, a year ago. The fellow rang the bell
as bold as anythi