'I always thought it was rather hopeless,' said Peter; 'but it seemed to me the right thing to do.'

'It seemed the right thing to do,' said Purvis like an echo. The dreamy look was in his lack-l.u.s.tre, weak eyes again, and his soft voice was more than usually indistinct. 'I should like very much if you could tell me anything about the man's childhood,' he continued. 'It is important to know every detail you can possibly furnish for the clue.'

'I never even saw a picture or a photograph of him,' said Peter.

'It is perplexing,' said Purvis.

'Yes,' said Peter, 'it is rather annoying.'

'Old servants are proverbial for their long memories,' the clerkly visitor went on. 'Are there any such remaining in his old home who would know anything about the man? Even a birth-mark--although it is a thing most often connected with cheap romances nowadays--might help to establish a case.'

'Or disestablish it,' said Peter.

'Or disestablish it,' repeated the echo.

'As a matter of fact,' Peter said, relenting a little, 'the child was born abroad, and no evidence of that sort is forthcoming. The lawyers have followed every possible clue that could lead to information about him without any result whatever.'

'Singular!' said Purvis.

'Yes,' a.s.sented Peter, 'I suppose there are few cases in which a man has disappeared so completely, and left no trace behind him.'

'The property which is at stake is a large one, I understood you to say,' said Purvis.

'I don't think I said so,' Peter answered; 'but there is no harm in telling you that some money is involved.'

'I should certainly know if any considerable property had been willed away about here,' said Purvis quietly; 'and you see our richest men in camp have really not much else except landed property to leave. In Buenos Ayres, and Rosario too, a man of importance in the town dying and leaving money could easily be traced.'

'Well, I haven't exactly expectations from him,' said Peter, feeling that he was getting into a muddle. 'The fact is,' he said cordially, 'I shall be interested to hear news of the man if you can obtain any for me.'

So far he had always regarded his brother's existence as some remote and hardly possible contingency. Now he began to see plainly that the man might very possibly be alive, and not only so, but that it might also be possible to trace his whereabouts. The sudden realization of this staggered him for a moment; but he went on steadily, 'I want the man found, and I shall spare no trouble or expense in finding him.

Even if he is dead I do not mind telling you that any definite information would be welcome to me; and if he is alive my object is to find him as soon as possible.'

Mr. Purvis took out his pocket-book. 'You will at least know whether the man was dark or fair?' he said.

'Fair, I suppose,' said Peter; 'all the portraits in the house are of fair men.'

'The man I spoke of is dark,' said Purvis, continuing his jottings in his notebook in a neat hand.

'Fair children often get dark as they grow older,' said Peter.

Purvis acquiesced. 'The singular thing about it all is,' he said, 'that no one now seems to be living who saw the boy when he was a baby.'

'No one can be traced,' said Peter.

'This affair of the child in Rosario is probably a mare's nest,' said Mr. Purvis in his hopeless way, as he closed his pocket-book and put a strap round it.

'Well, at least find out all you can about him,' said Peter, as Hopwood appeared with coffee, and Ross and Toffy joined them and sat down under the paraiso trees. There had been some heavy work on the estancia that morning, followed by a lazy afternoon.

'Can you tell me, Purvis,' said Toffy, breaking off an earnest conversation with Ross, 'why there should be such an enormous difficulty about getting a boiled shirt to wear? I suppose it really does cleanse one's linen to bang it with a stone in the river, but the appearance of greyness makes one doubtful.'

'You and Peter are both so beastly civilized!' said Ross, in a flannel shirt with baggy breeches and long boots. 'You don't even like killing cattle, and the way Hopwood polishes your boots makes them look much more fitted for St. James's Street than for the camp.'

'You ought to make friends with Juan Lara's wife,' said Purvis. 'She often washes d.i.c.k's little things for him, and does it very nicely.'

'I believe that Lara, on purely economical grounds, wears our shirts a week or two before he hands them over to his wife to wash,' said Ross, laughing.

'Ross,' said Peter, 'employs the gaucho's plan, and wears three shirts, and when the top one gets dirty he discloses the next one to view.'

'Remember, little man,' said Ross, stretching out a huge foot towards Peter's rec.u.mbent figure on the deck-chair, 'I 'm a head and shoulders taller than you are.'

'I 'm sure Mr. Ogilvie's remark was only in fun,' interposed Purvis.

He rose and went to summon his boy to come and have coffee, and the three men left behind under the trees watched him disappearing into the house.

'If it were a matter of real necessity,' said Ross, 'I believe I could endure the loss of Purvis; he becomes a bore, and tears and tabloids combined are really very depressing.'

'Poor beast!' said Toffy charitably.

'I can't make out,' said Ross, 'what the trouble is at present on his estancia. I have only heard some native gossip, and I don't know what it is all about; but there seems to be an idea that Purvis is lying on the top of a mine which may "go off sudden."'

'I believe,' began Peter, 'that Purvis is going to be of use, as Sir John thought he might be. There is a very odd tale he was telling me just now.' He broke off suddenly as Purvis reappeared in his usual quiet, shadowy way. He brought a small saddle-bag with him when he travelled, which seemed to be filled for the most part with papers.

His dark clothes were always neatly brushed and folded by himself, and he generally spent his days riding to and fro between the house and the nearest telegraph-office.

'You should take a holiday while you are here,' said Toffy, seeing Purvis sitting down immediately to write one of his interminable telegrams. 'It would do you good.'

'It's my nerves,' said Purvis hopelessly.

Ross laughed and said, 'If I lived on weak tea and tabloids as you do, Purvis, I should be in my grave in ten days.'

'I think,' said Purvis, 'that these new phospherine things are doing me some good. But I sleep so little now. I don't suppose there's an hour of the night when I 'm so sound asleep a whisper would not wake me.'

'It takes a good loud gong,' said Ross, 'to make me even realize that I am in bed.'

'At home,' said Peter, 'I once had an alarm-clock fixed above my bed to wake me, and at last I told the man who sold it to me that it never struck; and really I thought it did not until he showed me that it worked all right.'

'There is a beastly bell for the out-of-door servants at Hulworth,'

said Toffy, 'which is beside my window, and----'

'I know that bell,' said Peter. 'I tie it up regularly every time I am at Hulworth.'

'Have you also got a country seat?' asked Mr. Purvis.

'Oh, Hulworth is a mouldy old barrack,' replied Toffy. '"Country seat"

is too fine a name for it.'

'Is it quite near Bowshott?' asked Purvis.

'No, it's nine miles off,' said Peter, 'unless you ride across country.'