At very nearly the hour when Bar Vernon and Val Manning set out for that day’s fishing on Skanigo, a big, well-dressed man was standing in the front door of an “east side” hotel in the great city, absorbed, apparently, in some deep and gloomy train of thought.

“Not a trace of him,” he muttered. “Oh, what a fool I was to let him go! He never seemed half so valuable before. And then, those papers! Blessings brighten as they take their flight. Gone, completely gone, after keeping my hold on him and them so long. That’s what comes of getting too drunk. A fit of pity is sure to follow. Always so with me. Now, as far as I can see, my best hold is on these swells that have taken him in tow. No use trying to bully men like them. They’d only laugh at me. Only show is to sell out to ’em. They’d work it out better’n I could, anyway, seeing I’m debarred so[Pg 219] many privileges; but they shan’t do it without letting me in for my share. I feel safe about Bar. He’ll never open that thing till the time comes. Queer fellow ’bout some things. Anyhow, I must make my trade before then. I’ll go right down to old Danvers’s office this very morning and set the wires a-working. Make hay while the sun shines.”

A very important decision was that of Major Montague, and it might have had an immediate effect upon the tenor of Bar Vernon’s “new time,” if he had been permitted to carry it into effect.

Alas for the Major and his plans, however, that sunny morning!

On an opposite corner of the street, at that very moment, a tall, foreign-looking gentleman was leaning over and talking low to a short, broad, keen-eyed man, as he pointed in the direction of the Major.

“That’s the chap. You might as well spot him now. May not have another chance. Of course it wouldn’t do to have him convicted. He’d squeal too loud. But he must be put out of the way for a while.”

“Free board at a public institution for six[Pg 220] months,” returned the short man. “Will that do, Prosper?”

“That or thereabouts,” replied Prosper; “but he mustn’t see me. Go on.”

And Prosper drew back and disappeared around the corner; but, in another minute, a hand was laid lightly on Major Montague’s arm, and an oddly deferential voice said to him:

“My dear Major, you’re wanted.”

Pale indeed grew the rosy face of the Major, for he seemed to need no second look to establish the identity of the new arrival.

“Will you come up to my room with me and let me get my things?” he asked, huskily.

“Not just now, thank you,” replied the short man, “but I’ll send for them and have them brought down to your new hotel for you.”

Paler still grew the Major’s face, but, although half as large again as the short, broad man, he walked silently and unresistingly away with him.

Why?

Oh, nothing. Only that other man, though none of the best, so far as he himself was concerned, had walked up to Major Montague in the[Pg 221] character of the law, and the hand so lightly laid upon the Major’s arm had been that of power, and all such men as he wilt like dying plants when they are brought into contact with those two things.

Honesty greets the law as a brother, and charity shakes hands with power. Major Montague’s hand was shaking, indeed, but not in that way. Before Bar Vernon sat down to his broiled perch at Puff Evans’s table, his far-away uncle had been provided with quarters in a “new hotel” that was very old and musty, but from which he would make no calls on Judge Danvers until the Law should say to Power that “bail” had been found, or that other reasons required a further change of boarding-place for the Major.

A strange “hotel” was that, with such strong doors and locks, and such carefully guarded windows. Perfectly “burglar-proof,” one would be inclined to think, and yet more burglars and other thieves got into it in the course of a year than into all the other hotels in the great city put together. Only some of them had too little difficulty in getting in and too much in getting out.

[Pg 222]Neither Bar Vernon nor any of his friends knew what had become of Major Montague, and perhaps none of them would have cared to ask, unless reminded of him in some way.

Bar himself was too crammed full of the thoughts and things of his “new time” to dwell much just now upon the old or its individual characters.

When he and Val reached home that evening they found that Mrs. Wood had kindly kept a good supper and a mild scolding ready for them, and that George Brayton was also waiting till they should get through with both and come up-stairs.

They made a fair report of their operations on the lake, but did not seem to think the assistant principal of the Academy would be interested in their new mechanical contrivances. At all events, they did not say a word to him about the “trap.”

He on his part listened to all that they had to tell with a degree of kindly sympathy which would have won for him the unmeasured contempt of Mrs. Dryer; but the main point of his curiosity, after all, was as to how much Latin had[Pg 223] been captured in the intervals between the “bites.”

Here, however, Brayton was destined to be altogether surprised.

“Shall I hear you recite?” he said to Bar. “I can ask you questions as we go along.”

Bar handed him the grammar, open at the title page, saying:

“That’s where I began,” and immediately launched out into a repetition of every word on it.

Brayton listened with an amused and curious air, and turned the leaf as Bar reached the “date of publication” at the bottom.

Next came the preface, and then the introduction, and Bar waded rapidly but almost unerringly through them.

“That’ll do,” said Brayton. “Have you gone any farther?”

“Yes,” said Bar.

“How far?”

“About half a mile, I should say,” replied Bar, with the first sign of a smile he had given. “You told me to begin at the beginning.”

“And I should say you had,” said Brayton.[Pg 224] “It will take you long enough to digest all that. To-morrow you may take up your Greek, and I’ll try to make up my own mind how on earth I’d better go to work with yours. You’ve a good one. The only question is what to do with it.”

“That’s just what I’d like to know,” said Bar. “I’ve done a good many things with it already, but most of them don’t suit me very well.”

“We’ll talk about it hereafter,” said Brayton, thoughtfully. “You and Mr. Manning may go now. I think you have done a good day’s work.”

So they had, but George Brayton had no notion of what the best part of it—the hardest, at all events—consisted. Neither had it yet been completed, and the boys retired to their own room to give the matter d............