native of the
district. It would be very wrong and foolish to question Il Duca's
integrity.

With this assertion Frascatti went to bed. He had not shirked the
search, because he was paid for it, and he and his men had tramped the
mountains faithfully all night, well knowing it would result in nothing
but earning their money.

On the morning train from Catania arrived Silas Watson and his young
ward Kenneth Forbes, the boy who had so unexpectedly inherited Aunt
Jane's fine estate of Elmhurst on her death. The discovery of a will
which gave to Kenneth all the property their aunt had intended for her
nieces had not caused the slightest estrangement between the young
folks, then or afterward. On the contrary, the girls were all glad that
the gloomy, neglected boy, with his artistic, high-strung temperament,
would be so well provided for. Without the inheritance he would have
been an outcast; now he was able to travel with his guardian, the kindly
old Elmhurst lawyer, and fit himself for his future important position
in the world. More than all this, however, Kenneth had resolved to be a
great landscape painter, and Italy and Sicily had done much, in the past
year, to prepare him for this career.

The boy greeted his old friends with eager delight, not noticing for the
moment their anxious faces and perturbed demeanor. But the lawyer's
sharp eyes saw at once that something was wrong.

"Where is John Merrick?" he asked.

"Oh, I'm so glad you've come!" cried Patsy, clinging to his hand.

"We are in sore straits, indeed, Mr. Watson," said Louise.

"Uncle John is lost," explained Beth, "and we're afraid he is in the
hands of brigands."

Then she related as calmly as she could all that had happened. The
relation was clear and concise. She told of their meeting with Valdi on
the ship, of Count Ferralti's persistence in attaching himself to their
party, and of Uncle John's discovery that the young man was posing under
an assumed name. She did not fail to mention Ferralti's timely
assistance on the Amalfi drive, or his subsequent devoted attentions to
Louise; but the latter Beth considered merely as an excuse for following
them around.

"In my opinion," said she, "we have been watched ever since we left
America, by these two spies, who had resolved to get Uncle John into
some unfrequented place and then rob him. If they succeed in their vile
plot, Mr. Watson, we shall be humiliated and disgraced forever."

"Tut-tut," sa