For the present Walter Goodwin may safely be left on board the sea-going tug Dauntless in charge of the faithful Jack Devlin and the admiring marines. Some attention should be paid to the parents and the sister whom he had left behind in Wolverton. Their affairs may seem very prosaic after the crowded experiences of the only son by land and sea, but nevertheless they deserve to be accounted for.  
As the waiting days wore on, the house seemed to echo with loneliness. Walter had filled it with lusty clatter and activity, and the very disorder he had always left in his wake was an intimate part of the family life. There was a jubilee when his first letter arrived from the Isthmus, telling them of a safe voyage and of finding employment on the very day he landed. Because the thoughtful youth made no mention[Pg 173] of the dynamite ship, the household became more cheerful and less anxious. Walter was the most wonderful boy in the world.
 
Several days after this they received two letters in the same mail, which caused alarm and bewilderment. One of them had been dictated to Naughton in the Ancon hospital, the other written and signed by the impulsive Jack Devlin. They told the news of Walter's accident and this was very disturbing in itself, but, alas, the well-meaning attempt of the steam-shovel man to send solid aid and comfort by means of a money-order inspired the most alarming conjectures.
 
Mr. Horatio Goodwin was a man of a practical turn of mind, and he sounded the first note of misgiving when he told his wife and daughter:
 
"I cannot understand it at all. Walter has been hurt, but he sends us no details whatever. In this letter, which he dictated from the hospital, he tells us a great deal of interesting news about the Panama Canal, but it sounds as if it had been written by a man thoroughly familiar with the work."
 
"Walter is very bright—" began Eleanor.
 
[Pg 174]
 
"He never shone at English composition," sighed her mother.
 
"And I am quite sure he is not a trained engineer," added Mr. Goodwin. "The letter is not like Walter at all, and as for this money-order for forty dollars enclosed in the brief note from Jack Devlin——"
 
Mrs. Goodwin no more than half heard this speech. She was wondering whether Walter was really having good care. How dreadfully forlorn it must be in a hospital two thousand miles from home! Supposing one of those horrid mosquitoes that carry yellow-fever should fly in and bite him?
 
"Bless his heart!" cried she. "And we have no idea of what has happened to him. And to think of his sending money to us when I am quite sure he must need it for himself! It is just like him."
 
"He was probably hurt while trying to save somebody's life," quoth dewy-eyed Eleanor. "This Mr. Devlin says that poor Walter was a bit mussed up. It sounds perfectly awful, doesn't it?"
 
Mr. Goodwin shook his head and appeared[Pg 175] more than ever perplexed as he reread the two letters and laid them side by side on the sitting-room table, with the mysterious money-order between them.
 
"You two hero-worshippers do not seem to realize what an extraordinary affair this is," said he. "In his own letter Walter makes no mention of sending money. And in the same mail comes this large remittance on account of Walter's salary, and it is enclosed by one Devlin, who seems to have no official position on the Isthmus."
 
"He is the steam-shovel man who filled Walter with the notion of going to the Isthmus," said Mrs. Goodwin. "Walter thought he was a splendid fellow."
 
"But Walter knew nothing about him. And it is out of the question that a boy like him should be given forty dollars in advance by a government department only a few days after his arrival on the Isthmus."
 
"Walter must have made a wonderfully fine impression," argued the doting mother. "He was worrying about us, and he asked Mr. Devlin to look after his affairs and mail some money to us."
 
[Pg 176]
 
This sounded plausible, provided one took an exceedingly rosy view of Walter's earning capacity, and as Mrs. Goodwin and Eleanor regarded it, nothing was too extraordinary to happen on the Isthmus of Panama. But after Eleanor had gone to bed Mr. Goodwin eyed the baffling money-order and lost himself in meditative silence. At length his wife reminded him:
 
"You have been staring at that table long enough, Horatio. And you are worrying more and more. Of course, all I can think of is that Walter is ill and needs his mother. I hope his next letter will explain everything."
 
"He is the only boy we have, and I wish he was at home," said Mr. Goodwin in a low voice. His shoulders sagged more than usual and his face was white and tired. The absent son was tugging at his heart-strings. Unconsciously he let his glance dwell on the shabby old easy-chair in which Walter had been wont to fling himself after supper and study his high-school text-books.
 
"Why, Horatio, you look as if you thought something serious might have happened to him," exclaimed his wife. "I confess that I[Pg 177] am very low in my mind, but mothers are silly creatures. Are you very anxious?"
 
"You and I have never hidden anything from each other, my dear," he slowly answered. "Neither of these letters is from Walter himself. They make me feel as if we had not really heard from him. If some one had a motive for wishing us to believe that we need have no anxiety about Walter, this money might have been sent for a purpose, to keep us quiet."
 
"A bad motive? These letters were meant to deceive us?" quavered Mrs. Goodwin, and then she rallied to say with the most emphatic decision, "I don't care if it costs a dollar a word, Horatio, I want you to send a cable message to the hospital as soon as the office opens to-morrow morning. I would gladly sell every stick of furniture in the house to be sure of getting a reply from Walter within the next twenty-four hours, and so would you."
 
"That is precisely what I had decided to do," he exclaimed with an approving smile. "I indorse your ultimatum, my dear. We shall hear from Walter to-morrow, and then we'll be[Pg 178] laughing at each other for borrowing so much trouble."
 
It therefore happened that before noon of the following day there was delivered to the surgeon of the accident ward a message, which read thus:
 
Goodwin hospital Ancon.
Cable me is all well.
Father.
The surgeon sighed as if here was a hard nut to crack. This was only the day after Walter Goodwin had vanished from the hospital, to the consternation of his friends, Devlin and Alfaro. They had hurried into Panama in search of him and no word had come back to the surgeon.
 
"I have no idea where Goodwin is," he said to a friend of the hospital staff. "He failed to turn up here last night, and I guess his friends couldn't find him. They were afraid he was in trouble."
 
"What will you do with the cablegram?"
 
"I think I had better hold it for two or three days before I try to answer it myself. Devlin[Pg 179] or that impetuous young diplomat from Colombia may drift in and tell me some news. And Goodwin himself may reappear. I hate to cable the agitated parent that his son's whereabouts are unknown. It would be like looking for a needle in a hay-stack for me to try to find him in Panama."
 
The surgeon tucked the message in his pocket and went to join his white-clad fellows in the operating-room. He was a very busy young man, and there was no time in his crowded day to investigate the disappearance of Walter Goodwin. And inasmuch as the Dauntless and the marines had been sent to sea with very little publicity, several days passed before the story of the pursuit of the Juan Lopez reached the hospital.
 
Meanwhile that anxious parent, Mr. Horatio Goodwin, had found it difficult to give proper attention to his book-keeping duties in the office of the coal-dealer in Wolverton. He started nervously when any one entered the place and his eye was alert for the cap and buttons of a telegraph-messenger boy. At the end of the first day of waiting, he trudged homeward in a[Pg 180] state of mind distraught and downcast. His wife was grievously disappointed that no word had come from Walter, but Eleanor maintained her blithe spirits. She had suddenly decided to become a sculptor and labored until bedtime over a sticky lump of modelling clay.
 
"This is a bust of Walter," she announced. "It looks as if his face had been stepped on, but the firmly moulded chin is quite well done, don't you think? It is comforting to look at that sculptured chin. It shows that Walter can overcome all obstacles. It helps to keep me from worrying about him."
 
Even this masterpiece failed to console the parents, who waited in vain through another long day. Every little while Mr. Goodwin darted from the coal-dealer's place to the telegraph office. At supper he told his wife:
 
"There has been no interruption in the cable service, and our message must have reached Ancon within two or three hours after I sent it."
 
"Walter may have left the hospital by this time," said she, "but they ought to know his address."
 
[Pg 181]
 
"Yes. The department in which he is employed should be able to locate him at once. The whereabouts of every American must be on record."
 
Walter's silence tortured them. Like other fathers and mothers since the beginning, they imagined all sorts of mischances which might have befallen him, just as when he had lingered after dark at the skating-pond his mother was sure he had broken through the ice. Such crosses as these the right kind of parents must bear. It is part of the price they pay. On the Isthmus of Panama Walter Goodwin might consider himself a man, but in his own home, in the hearts of his own people, he was still a boy to be watched over, to be feared for, to inspire a thousand tender anxieties of which he would never be aware.
 
"It will be very hard to wait for a letter from him," murmured Mrs. Goodwin. "I have tried to be brave, but——"
 
"You have been brave and fine," and her husband kissed her. "Perhaps I should not have let him go. I find it difficult to apply myself to my day's work. I can write to the canal[Pg 182] authorities asking them to make a search, but we could not expect a reply before three weeks."
 
At breakfast next morning Eleanor, whose faith in the ability of her masterful brother to conquer in any circumstances was still unshaken, declared with the air of one who had solved a problem:
 
"If I were the parent of an only son who was lost, strayed, or stolen, do you know what I'd do? I should take that money-order that has made all the trouble and use it to pay my way to the............