"Then what are you to believe?" 

 "That there has been foul play!" 

 The elder man turned away with another shrug, and it was some moments before Harry saw his face; when he did it was grave and sympathetic as before, and exhibited no trace of the irritation which it had cost an apparent effort to suppress. 

 "I am not surprised at that entering your head, Ringrose." 

 "Has it never entered yours?" 

 "Everything has; but one weeds out the impossibilities." 

 "Why is it impossible?" Harry burst out. "It is a good deal likelier than that my father would have done what it's said he did! There's an impossibility, if you like; and you would say so, too, if you had known him better." 

 Mr. Lowndes shook his head, and smiled sadly as he watched the boy's flaming face through his spectacles. 

 "You may have known your father, Ringrose, but you don't know human nature, or you wouldn't talk like that. Nothing is impossible—no crime—not even to the best of us—when the strain becomes more than we can bear. It is a pure question of strain and strength: which is the greater of the two. Every man has his breaking-point; your father was at his for years; it's a mystery to me how he held out so long. You must look at it sensibly, Ringrose. No thinking man will blame him, for the simple reason that every man who thinks knows very well that he might have done the same thing himself under the same pressure. Besides—give him a chance! With ten thousand pounds in his pocket——" 

 "You're sure he had it in his pocket?" interrupted Harry. These arguments only galled his wounds. 

 "Or else in a bag; it comes to the same thing." 

 "In what shape would he have the money?" 

 "Big notes and some gold." 

 "Yet foul play's an impossibility!" 

 "The numbers of the notes are known. Not one of them has turned up." 

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