CHAPTER XXI
AN UNEXPECTED MEETING
It was a depressing discovery that Mrs. Ismond had made. Frank sat staring at the paper in his hand in silence for some minutes.
This was a printed sheet. It was headed: "Reward—One Hundred Dollars." In short, the warden of the Juvenile Reformatory at Linwood, offered that amount for the return to that institution of an escaped inmate—Richard Markham Welmore.
"Yes, it is our Markham," murmured Frank—"that is his middle name. The description answers him exactly," and again Frank said in a troubled way: "Too bad—too bad."
Frank knew what his mother was thinking of—that they had harbored a convicted criminal, who had weakly yielded to temptation, beggaring them, and going back to his old evil ways.
He now knew what Dale Wacker meant when he spoke of the inventor of the wire puzzle as being in a "snug, tight place." Markham had
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