Saranac Author:John Talbot Smith Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: knew about this interesting family, and labeled it in his mind for immediate need. He foresaw a long series of events, curious and dreadful, that might never hap... more »pen and were yet possible, and might one day set themselves against pride, beauty, money and a good name. When Amedee LaRoche ran away from Saranac, the firm whose funds he had spent to the sum of three thousand dollars, were David Winthrop and Howard DeLaunay. They were tanners. The former was a man of means then, the latter was a man of means now. The rich man bad grown poor, and the poor man rich since that time. If there had been any harm done to Amedee LaRoche the junior partner had done it, for he was then poor and desperate, a stranger in the town, and, as he had many times shown himself, a hard, grasping, perhaps unprincipled man. It was seventeen years since Mr. De Launay and his name had appeared in Saranac. Hugh, then a boy of eleven, recalled his well-dressed handsome figure clearly. In polish and education he and his were far above anything that had ever been seen in the town. Until this day Sullivan did not know whence De Launay came, or to what locality or tribe he might belong. His wife was a retired, brilliant-looking woman who never talked, and his only child a handsome creature of Hugh's age with a sharp tongue, a fondness for private theatricals, and considerable beauty. They were known to be poor on their arrival . In five years the senior partner in the tanning business sold his interest to DeLaunay, and the latter's fortune then made had rolled up to large figures since. The story of the firm's gentleness in dealing with their clerk was often told and well known to everyone. Mr. DeLaunay agreed to bear two-thirds of the loss if Amedee were allowed to remain in exile unpunished. His motives w...« less