nistered it. The officer had seldom
known women to intrude into it, save to get the worst of it. Its minister
had an air of burly ridicule that trenched on contempt as he broke into a
laugh of great relish.

"The county can accommodate its boarders without your help, Mrs. Royston.
Much obliged, all the same. He ain't no nice customer. He is mighty lucky
to be sure of his grub and fire and shelter this tough winter. He ain't
got to do any work. He has the freedom of the yard and the halls and the
office at all hours. No, madam, he is as snug as a bug in a rug. You'll
have a chance to spend all the money that you care to put up in this
affair, if I'm not mightily mistaken. No use in wastin' any of it on
Micky."

The fact that the child had not been wearing the coat when starting on
the drive, but had been seen in it immediately previous to the
catastrophe; that it should be subsequently found and not on his body, of
which no trace had ever been discovered, went far to convince the
authorities that the garment had been restored to the locality afterward
in pursuance of an effort to prove his death. They had begun to believe
that the child had in some manner escaped at the time of the tragedy, and
was now held in retreat lest he disclose incriminating evidence. But it
was a barren triumph of logic. They realized that any demand of the
reward offered must needs bring a counter inquiry concerning the facts of
Briscoe's murder, and therefore from the beginning they had little hope
that any good result would ensue from the wide publicity and the extended
search that his mother and her adviser had inaugurated. The child
remained as if caught up in the clouds. Though extravagant offers of
reward for any information concerning him, as well as for his ultimate
recovery, were scattered broadcast throughout the country; though every
clue, however fantastic or tenuous or obviously fraudulent, was as
cautiously examined as if it really held the nucleus of discovery; though
fakers and cheats of preposterous sorts harassed the proceedings and
wrought many malevolent bits of mischief in disappointed revenge, being
treated with a leniency which would suffer aught, all, rather than clog
any vague chance of a revelation of the seclusion of the lost
child--there seemed no prospect, no hope.

It had been Lillian's instinct to continue in the place where the child
had been last seen--she felt a fictitious sense of proximity in the
familiar l