eager eyes could see glory within easy reach. Mention of a cold
snack and a drop of beer, however, to be found in the kitchen,
served to cast a gleam of brightness on their gloom, and they
vanished in search of it with something approaching cheeriness,
Johnson taking notes to the last.

They had hardly gone when Glossop whirled into the room in a state
of effervescing agitation.

'Mr Abney, Ogden Ford is nowhere to be found!'

Mr Abney greeted the information with a prodigious sneeze.

'What do you bead?' he demanded, when the paroxysm was over. He
turned to me. 'Bister Burds, I understood you to--ah--say that
the scou'drels took their departure without the boy Ford.'

'They certainly did. I watched them go.'

'I have searched the house thoroughly,' said Glossop, 'and there
are no signs of him. And not only that, the Boy Beckford cannot be
found.'

Mr Abney clasped his head in his hands. Poor man, he was in no
condition to bear up with easy fortitude against this succession
of shocks. He was like one who, having survived an earthquake, is
hit by an automobile. He had partly adjusted his mind to the quiet
contemplation of Mr MacGinnis and friends when he was called upon
to face this fresh disaster. And he had a cold in the head, which
unmans the stoutest. Napoleon would have won Waterloo if