Then, one afternoon," his breath pulled sharp, "Tom Langdon came into my office." "He was your cousin ?" Ba'tiste's voice was that of a friendly cross-examiner.
"Yes.

I hadn't seen him in five years.

We had never had much to do with him; we," and Houston smiled coldly with the turn that Fate had given to conditions in the Houston family, "always had looked on him as a sort of a black sheep.

He had been a runaway from home; about the only letters my uncle ever had received from him had asked for money to get him out of trouble.

Where he had been this time, I don't know.