the truth when he replied that he did not know where his wife was.  I said I must find her.  He forbade me to make any attempt.  Then I begged him to tell me if she was with friends.  I remember very well what he replied.—­’I’m not going to say one word more to any man living, Mr. Gilwaters,’ he answered determinedly.  ’I shall be dead to the world—­only because I’ve been a trusting fool! —­for ten years or thereabouts, but, when I come back to it, I’ll let the world see what revenge means!  Go away!’ he concluded.  ‘I won’t say one word more.’  And—­I left him.”

“And—­you made no more inquiries?—­about the wife?” asked Bryce.

“I did what I could,” replied Mr. Gilwaters.  “I made some inquiry in the neighbourhood in which they had lived.  All I could discover was that Mrs. Brake had disappeared under extraordinarily mysterious circumstances.  There was no trace whatever of her.  And I speedily found that things were being said—­the usual cruel suspicions, you know.”

“Such as—­what?” asked Bryce.

“That the amount of the defalcations was much larger than had been allowed to appear,” replied Mr. Gilwaters.  “That Brake was a very clever rogue who had got the money safely planted somewhere abroad, and that his wife had gone off somewhere —­Australia, or Canada, or some other far-off region—­to await his release.  Of course, I didn’t believe one word of all that.  But there was the fact—­she had vanished!  And eventually, I thought of Ransford, as having been Brake’s great friend, so I tried to find him.  And then I found that he, too, who up to that time had been practising in a London suburb—­Streatham—­had also disappeared.  Just after Brake’s arrest, Ransford had suddenly sold his practice and gone—­no one knew where, but it was believed—­abroad.  I couldn’t trace him, anyway.  And soon after that I had a long illness, and for two or three years was an invalid, and—­well, the thing was over and done with, and, as I said just now, I have never heard anything of any of them for all these years.  And now! —­now you tell me that there is a Mary Bewery who is a ward of a Dr. Mark Ransford at—­where did you say?”

“At Wrychester,” answered Bryce.  “She is a young woman of twenty, and she has a brother, Richard, who is between seventeen and eighteen.”

“Without a doubt those are Brake’s children!” exclaimed the old man.  “The infant I spoke of was a boy.  Bless me!—­how extraordinary.  How long have they been at Wrychester?”

“Ransford has been in practice there some years—­a few years,” replied Bryce.  “These two young people joined him there definitely two years ago.  But from what I have learnt, he has acted as their guardian ever since they were mere children.”

“And—­their mother?” asked Mr. Gilwaters.

“Said to be dead—­long since,” answered Bryce.  “And their father, too.  They know nothing.  Ransford won’t tell them anything.  But, as you say—­I’ve no doubt of it myself now —­they must be the children of John Brake.”