path brought him close upon them. Mrs. Congdon was sitting
on a bench under a big elm and the children were joyously romping on the
lawn in front of her, playing with a toy balloon to which a bit of bark
had been fastened. They would toss it in the air and jump and catch it
while the weight prevented its escape. A gust of wind caught it as
Archie passed and drove it across his path, while the children with
screams of glee pursued it. The string caught under his hat brim and he
seized it just as the girl, outdistancing her brother, plunged into him.

"Edith!" called the mother, rising quickly. "Children, you mustn't go
into the path. There's plenty of room here for you to play."

"The wind was a little too much for you that time!" laughed Archie, as
the children, panting from their run, waited for the restoration of
their plaything. He measured the buoyancy of the balloon against the
ballast, and let go of it with a little toss that seemed to free it,
then he sprang up and caught it amid their excited cries.

The little girl curtsied as he put the string in her hand.

"Thank you very much!" they chorused.

Mrs. Congdon had walked a little way toward the path but now that the
children were again scampering over the lawn she paused and made a
slight, the slightest, inclination of the head as Archie lifted his hat
and continued on his way.

Edith was the name used in the telegram he had found in the Bailey
Harbor house, and this coupled with his closer view of the child
disposed of Archie's last hope that after all it might not be Mrs.
Congdon and her children he had stumbled upon. She had no business to
throw herself across his path, he fumed. The appearance of Putney
Congdon's father at Cornford had shaken him sufficiently, but that he
should be haunted by the man's wife and children angered him. He wanted
to fly from the park and hide himself again in his room at the
Governor's house, but he was without will to leave. The decent thing for
him to do was to take the first train for Bailey, and begin diligent
search for Putney Congdon, dead or alive. He had no right to assume that
the man's serious injury or death would be any consolation to the wife
and children. And the quarrel between husband and wife might have been
only a tiff, something that would have been adjusted without further
bitterness but for his interference. There was no joy in the fate that
kept continually bringing his crime to his attention. Thorough