that
he had been suffering from. Quite recovered, and playing with a ball of
coloured worsted.

There remained the log of the Arago; in it would be found the latitude
and longitude of the boats she had picked up.

The Arago, due at Papetee, became overdue. Lestrange watched the
overdue lists from day to day, from week to week, from month to month,
uselessly, for the Arago never was heard of again. One could not affirm
even that she was wrecked; she was simply one of the ships that never
come back from the sea.

CHAPTER II

THE SECRET OF THE AZURE

To lose a child he loves is undoubtedly the greatest catastrophe that
can happen to a man. I do not refer to its death.

A child wanders into the street, or is left by its nurse for a moment,
and vanishes. At first the thing is not realised. There is a pang and
hurry at the heart which half vanishes, whilst the understanding
explains that in a civilised city, if a child gets lost, it will be
found and brought back by the neighbours or the police.

But the police know nothing of the matter, or the neighbours, and the
hours pass. Any minute may bring back the wanderer; but the minutes
pass, and the day wears into evening, and the evening to night, and the
night to dawn, and the common sounds of a new day begin.

You cannot remain at home for restlessness; you go out, only to return
hurriedly for news. You are eternally listening, and what you hear
shocks you; the common sounds of life, the roll of the carts and cabs
in the street, the footsteps of the passers-by, are full of an
indescribable mournfulness; music increases your misery into madness,
and the joy of others is monstrous as laughter heard in hell.

If someone were to bring you the dead body of the child, you might
weep, but you would bless him, for it is the uncertainty that kills.

You go mad, or go on living. Years pass by, and you are an old man.
You say to yourself: "He would have been twenty years of age to-day."

There is not in the old ferocious penal code of our forefathers a
punishment adequate to the case of the man or woman who steals a child.

Lestrange was a wealthy man, and one hope remained to him, that the
children might have been rescued by some passing ship. It was not the
case of children lost in a city, but in the broad Pacific, where ships
travel from all ports to all ports, and to advertise his loss
adequately it was necessary to placard the world. Ten thousand dollars
was th