Page:Young Hunters of the Lake.djvu/85

Rh he had and gone away. Of course my mother sent out an alarm, and men hunted all over for him. But he was not to be found."

"But you found him later," ventured Snap.

"No, he was never found. When folks learned how queerly he had acted all came to the conclusion that he had gone to the river and drowned himself, and after awhile my mother thought so too."

"And what of the fortune?" questioned Shep.

"My mother tried to find the letter Uncle Pierre had received, but that was gone too. Then she wrote to France. She learned that some money was really coming to her and my uncle, but could not get any particulars. She even employed a lawyer, but after a year the lawyer gave up, too. There was a mystery about the whole affair and the solution, it seems, rested with my Uncle Pierre."

"And you never got the money?" asked Whopper.

"Not a dollar of it."

"It's queer you never spoke about this before," said Snap.

"Well, mother doesn't like to speak of it, because she doesn't want folks to know we had a crazy man in our family. But Uncle Pierre wasn't