confidential interview, and he resolved to descend the steps, pass
before the windows of the kitchen where Louise might see him, and
penetrate the shrubbery, where she might be induced to follow him. They
would not be interrupted nor overheard there.

But he had barely left the veranda before the figure of Richelieu,
who had been patiently waiting for Mainwaring's disappearance, emerged
stealthily from the shrubbery. He had discovered his loss on handing his
"fire assays" to the good-humored Bradley for later examination, and he
had retraced his way, step by step, looking everywhere for his missing
stone with the unbounded hopefulness, lazy persistency, and lofty
disregard for time and occupation known only to the genuine boy.
He remembered to have placed his knotted bag upon the veranda, and,
slipping off his stiff boots slowly and softly, slid along against the
wall of the house, looking carefully on the floor, and yet preserving
a studied negligence of demeanor, with one hand in his pocket, and his
small mouth contracted into a singularly soothing and almost voiceless
whistle--Richelieu's own peculiar accomplishment. But no stone appeared.
Like most of his genus he was superstitious, and repeated to himself the
cabalistic formula: "Losin's seekin's, findin's keepin's"--presumed
to be of great efficacy in such cases--with religious fervor. He had
laboriously reached the end of the veranda when he noticed the open
window of Louise's room, and stopped as a perfunctory duty to look in.
And then Richelieu Sharpe stood for an instant utterly confounded and
aghast at this crowning proof of the absolute infamy and sickening
enormity of Man.

There was HIS stone--HIS, RICHELIEU'S, OWN SPECIMEN, carefully gathered
by himself and none other--and now stolen, abstracted, "skyugled,"
"smouged," "hooked" by this "rotten, skunkified, long-legged,