“You’re awfully kind,” returned Roy.  “But I don’t like to intrude.”

“It won’t be intruding.  The pater likes me to bring fellows with me.  I wasn’t going this week, but that won’t matter.  He’ll be glad to see me.  You’ll come, won’t you?”

Roy thanked him again and accepted.  He liked the genial hearted fellow as much as Rex had done.

On the way down Atkins told him of the devices for disposing of the punch.

“You don’t suppose the glass he drank went to his head so as to do him any injury, do you?” asked Roy.

Atkins reassured him on this point, and then suggested that they had better go to the hotel where the jollification had been held to see if any trace of Rex could be obtained there.

But the clerk informed them that no such person had hired a room.

That evening they discussed the matter with Judge Atkins without telling the details of the jollification, which doubtless he was astute enough to guess at.  The result was that messages were sent to all the police precincts, and a detective was put on the case.

Roy sent a telegram to his mother Saturday night making it as hopeful as he could, but his own heart was growing heavier and heavier.

Atkins did his best to cheer him up, and under other circumstances Roy would have had a most enjoyable time.  But he could not keep his thoughts from Rex.

He went home on Monday, fearful of the meeting with his mother.  He felt at times as if the worst news, if it might be but definite, would be better to carry home than those tidings he must take, which would keep them all in such awful suspense.

Sydney had recovered, but the shock of Roy’s announcement threw him back into a relapse.  And yet he insisted on seeing Roy.

“Mr. Tyler’s money has not made us happy after all, has it, Roy?” he said, after the sad affair had been talked over.

“I was afraid that it wouldn’t, Syd.  Still, this might have happened just the same.  You have not been well though, old fellow, since that night you came over to Burdock to make the old man’s will.”

“Have you noticed that, Roy?” said Sydney quickly.

“Yes, it seems, as you say, that we must pay up for having the money in some way.  But where can poor Rex be?  I wonder if he is ashamed or afraid to come home?”

Anxiously the reports from the detectives were awaited.  But when they came they were only depressing.  Positively no trace of the missing boy could be found.

Advertisements were inserted in the New York and Philadelphia papers, but nothing came of them.  The family were by this time well nigh distracted.  They had not even the poor satisfaction of mourning the lost as one dead.  They could only wait and hope, but as the days passed into a week, this last seemed futile.

The time came for school to open, but Roy had little heart to go alone.  Still, he must attend to his education.