is all very simple. Nothing to make a fuss about.

"Then," said the coroner, "he didn't tell you where he meant to go?"

"No, sir," replied Jim Baker, "he just was going abroad."

"Do you know where he went?"

"No, sir."

"Did you ever try to find out?"

"No, sir. Where 'ad been the use?"

Where indeed? The world is so large! and the Baker family so
insignificant!

"He didn't write to you?"

"No, sir."

"Nor communicate with you in any way?"

"No, sir."

"You had no idea what had become of him?"

"Not until last summer, sir."

"What happened then?"

"His sister, sir, our Emily, she was out walkin' with Harry
Smith--young Smith from next door to us, sir--and she was down in the
West End o' London with 'im one day, and 'oo should they meet, sir,
but Paul."

"Did they speak to him?"

"Yes, sir. They says, ''Ello, Paul, we didn't know as 'ow you was
'ome,' and 'e seemed upset like at first, and pretended 'e didn't know
'em, and that they'd made a mistake. But they chaffed 'im and went on
talkin', so I suppose Paul 'e thought it best to make a clean breast
of it all."

"Do you mean to say that he told his sister and his friend that he was
carrying on a criminal fraud against the Earl of Radclyffe?"

"Oh, no, sir; not all that. 'E only told 'em that 'e was in for a good
thing. A gentleman's gentleman 'e told 'em 'e was and doin' well for
hisself. 'E said 'e would come and see the fam'ly--'e meant me and 'is
mother, sir--some day soon. But 'e never come."

"Did he say where he was living?"

"Yes, sir. 'E gave 'is address to Emily. Up 'Ampstead way it were. A
long way, sir. Me and 'is mother never seemed to 'ave the time to go
and look 'im up; but Emily she went with young Smith one Sunday, but
they never found the street, not where Paul said 'e was livin'. There
weren't no such street in 'Ampstead, sir."

"And you never thought of making further inquiries?"

"No, sir." This again with that quiet philosophy, the stolid fatalism,
peculiar to those who live from day to day, from hand to mouth, who
have neither leisure nor desire to peer outside the very circumscribed
limits of their own hearths.

"You never made any effort to know more about what your son was doing
or how he was living?" suggested the coroner, who, though accustomed
to this same quiet philosophy in men and women of that class, was
nevertheless strangely moved in this instance by the expression of a
fatalism that carried in its t