ocalities that had known him. But with the exigencies of the
systematic effort for his recovery she returned to her own home in the
city of Glaston, whither Gladys accompanied her, as being more accessible
when her presence in the search was required.

Julian Bayne gave himself wholly to the effort. He travelled here and
there, pervading the country like some spirit of unrest, threading the
intricacies of city slums, north, south, east, and west, personally
interviewing all manner of loathly creatures, damaged by vice and sloth
and ignorance and crime almost out of all semblance of humanity. He had
not dreamed that such beings existed upon the earth. Sometimes, unaware
of the circumstances and the danger they courted, they caught up a child
wherewith to deceive him, if it might be, generally a pitiable, puny
thing, swarming with vermin, half famished and forlorn. But Julian was
dubious how ill treatment and lack of nourishment might have transformed
the heir of the proud Archibald Royston, and in each instance he summoned
Lillian through long journeys, tortured with alternations of hope and
suspense, to inspect the waif. All without avail. True, she invariably
bettered the condition of the little creature, thus fortunate in
attracting her notice, purveying clothes and food, and paying a good
round price for the consent of its keepers to place it in some orphanage
or other juvenile refuge. So exhaustive, so judicious, so tireless, was
the search, so rich the reward, that as time went by and no result
ensued, the authorities became more than ever convinced that since the
child's abduction was complicated with the more desperate crime of
Briscoe's murder, this effectually precluded any attempt at his
restoration by the kidnappers; for indeed, to those who knew the facts,
the large reward was obviously the price of a halter. As this theory
gained strength, their ardor in the search declined, and Lillian and
Julian realized that more than ever the child's restoration would depend
on their individual exertions.

The effort came to seem an obsession on the part of Bayne. He was worn
and weary; his business interest languished, and his friends,
remonstrating in vain, regarded it as the culminating injury to his life
and prospects already wrought by the influence of this woman.

Indeed, one of the chief difficulties of the continuance of the
enterprise was the resistance they must needs maintain to the
remonstrance of friends.