uld have been deadly poison to you, in
the state you were in. I say! I'll wear batting-gloves the next time we
shake hands!" and Thrush blew softly on his mangled fingers.

"You believed he'd done it, and you kept it to yourself," murmured Mr.
Upton, still much impressed. "Tell me, my dear fellow--did you believe it
after that interview with Baumgartner in his house?"

Thrush emptied his glass at once.

"Don't remind me of that interview, Mr. Upton; there was the lad on the
other side of so much lath-and-plaster, and I couldn't scent him through
it! But he never made a sound, confound him!"

"Tony's told me about that; they were whispering, for reasons of their
own."

"I ought to have seen that old man listening! His ears must have grown
before my purblind eyes! But his story was an extraordinarily interesting
and circumstantial effort. And to come back to your question, it did fit
in with the theory of a fatal accident on your boy's part; he was
frightened to show his face at school after sleeping in the Park, let
alone what he was supposed to have done there; and that, he believed,
would break his mother's heart in any case."

"By Jove, and so it might! It wouldn't take much just now," said Mr.
Upton, sadly.

"So he thought of the ship you wouldn't let him go out in--and the whole
thing fitted in! Of course he had told the old ruffian--saving his
presence elsewhere--all about the forbidden voyage; and that gentleman of
genius had it ready for immediate use. I'm bound to say he used it on me
with excellent effect."

"Same here," said the ironmaster--"though I'd no idea what you suspected.
I thought it a conceivable way out of any bad scrape, for that particular
boy."

"It imposed upon us all," said Thrush, "but one. I was prepared to
believe it if you did, and you believed it because you didn't know your
boy as well as you do now. But Miss Upton, who seems to know him better
than anybody else--do you remember how she wouldn't hear of it for a
moment?"

"I do _so,_ God bless her!"

"That shook me, or rather it prevented me from accepting what I never had
quite accepted in my heart. That's another story, and you're only in the
mood for one at present; but after seeing Baumgartner on Saturday, I
thought I'd like to know a little more about him, not from outsiders but
from the inside of his own skull. So I went to the British Museum to have
a look at his books. It was after hours for getting bo