might
also be possible to trace his whereabouts. The sudden realization of
this staggered him for a moment; but he went on steadily, 'I want the
man found, and I shall spare no trouble or expense in finding him.
Even if he is dead I do not mind telling you that any definite
information would be welcome to me; and if he is alive my object is to
find him as soon as possible.'

Mr. Purvis took out his pocket-book. 'You will at least know whether
the man was dark or fair?' he said.

'Fair, I suppose,' said Peter; 'all the portraits in the house are of
fair men.'

'The man I spoke of is dark,' said Purvis, continuing his jottings in
his notebook in a neat hand.

'Fair children often get dark as they grow older,' said Peter.

Purvis acquiesced. 'The singular thing about it all is,' he said,
'that no one now seems to be living who saw the boy when he was a baby.'

'No one can be traced,' said Peter.

'This affair of the child in Rosario is probably a mare's nest,' said
Mr. Purvis in his hopeless way, as he closed his pocket-book and put a
strap round it.

'Well, at least find out all you can about him,' said Peter, as Hopwood
appeared with coffee, and Ross and Toffy joined them and sat down under
the paraiso trees. There had been some heavy work on the estancia that
morning, followed by a lazy afternoon.

'Can you tell me, Purvis,' said Toffy, breaking off an earnest
conversation with Ross, 'why there should be such an enormous
difficulty about getting a boiled shirt to wear? I suppose it really
does cleanse one's linen to bang it with a stone in the river, but the
appearance of greyness makes one doubtful.'

'You and Peter are both so beastly civilized!' said Ross, in a flannel
shirt with baggy breeches and long boots. 'You don't even like killing
cattle, and the way Hopwood polishes your boots makes them look much
more fitted for St. James's Street than for the camp.'

'You ought to make friends with Juan Lara's wife,' said Purvis. 'She
often washes Dick's little things for him, and does it very nicely.'

'I believe that Lara, on purely economical grounds, wears our shirts a
week or two before he hands them over to his wife to wash,' said Ross,
laughing.

'Ross,' said Peter, 'employs the gaucho's plan, and wears three shirts,
and when the top one gets dirty he discloses the next one to view.'

'Remember, little man,' said Ross, stretching out a huge foot towards
Peter's recumbent figure on the deck-c