n's presence that he had sent the name of Hon. Van
Rensselaer Vandervelt to the Senate for the position of Chief-Justice!

THE TEST OF DISAPPEARANCE.

CHAPTER XXVII.

A PROBLEM OF DISAPPEARANCE.

After patient study of the disappearance of Horace Endicott, for five
years, Richard Curran decided to give up the problem. All clues had come
to nothing. Not the faintest trace of the missing man had been found.
His experience knew nothing like it. The money earned in the pursuit
would never repay him for the loss of self-confidence and of nerve, due
to study and to ill success. But for his wife he would have withdrawn
long ago from the search.

"Since you have failed," she said, "take up my theory. You will find
that man in Arthur Dillon."

"That's the strongest reason for giving up," he replied. "Once before I
felt my mind going from insane eagerness to solve the problem. It would
not do to have us both in the asylum at once."

"I made more money in following my instincts, Dick, than you have made
in chasing your theories. Instinct warned me years ago that Arthur
Dillon is another than what he pretends. It warns me now that he is
Horace Endicott. At least before you give up for good, have a shy at my
theory."

"Instinct! Theory! It is pure hatred. And the hate of a woman can make
her take an ass for Apollo."

"No doubt I hate him. Oh, how I hate that man ... and young Everard...."

"Or any man that escapes you," he filled in with sly malice.

"Be careful, Dick," she screamed at him, and he apologized. "That hate
is more to me than my child. It will grow big enough to kill him yet.
But apart from hate, Arthur Dillon is not the man he seems. I could
swear he is Horace Endicott. Remember all I have told you about his
return. He came back from California about the time Endicott
disappeared. I was playing Edith Conyngham then with great success,
though not to crowded houses."

She laughed heartily at the recollection.

"I remarked to myself even then that Anne Dillon ... she's the choice
hypocrite ... did not seem easy in showing the letter which told of his
coming back, how sorry he was for his conduct, how happy he would make
her with the fortune he had earned."

"All pure inference," said Curran. "Twenty men arrived home in New York
about the same time with fortunes from the mines, and some without
fortunes from the war."

"Then how do you account for this, smart one? Never a word of his life