Chapter Twenty Six.

Chapter Twenty Six.Missing Links.For three hours that night the two friends, arm-in-arm, paced the empty streets, saying little, brooding much, yet gaining courage at every step. The touch of his guardian’s arm thrilled Roger now and again with a sensation of hope and relief in the midst of his dejection which almost surprised him. He had lost his brother; but was not this man as good as a brother to him? Would life be quite brotherless as long as he remained at his side?The tutor, for his part, experienced a strange emotion too. The opening day had brought a crisis in his life as well as in that of his ward. It was a day to which he had long looked forward, partly with the dread of separation, partly with the joy of a man who has honestly done his work and is about to render up his trust. But was it all over now? No longer now was he a guardian or governor. Was he therefore to lose this gallant comrade, to whom all the brotherhood in his nature went out?With reflections such as these it is scarcely to be wondered at that little was said during that long aimless walk.At last Roger shivered.“Let’s turn in,” said Mr Armstrong.They were in a street off the Strand, a long way from their hotel, and no cab in sight.“Any place will do,” said Roger. “Why not this?” and he pointed to the door of a seedy-looking private hotel, over which a lamp burned with the legend—“Night porter in attendance.”The tutor surveyed the house curiously through his and then said—“Quite so; I stayed here once before,” and rang the bell.The door was opened by a person of whose nationality there could be little doubt, particularly when, after a momentary inspection of his belated guests, he uttered an exclamation of joy and accosted the tutor—“Mon ami! Oh! I am glad to see you, my good friend. Friend of mypauvre père!—friend of my youth! It is you. Ah, Monsieur!” added he, addressing Roger, “for your friend’s sake you are welcome.Entrez!”“Be quiet now, Gustav,” said the tutor. “Bring us come coffee in the coffee-room, if you can get it made, and light a fire in the bedroom. We will talk in the morning.”Gustav gesticulated delighted acquiescence in any demand his hero made, and ushered them into the coffee-room.“What a queer fellow!” said Roger when he had vanished in search of the coffee.“Queer but good-hearted fellow is Gustav,” said the tutor. “I have known him a long time; to-morrow I’ll tell you— Hullo!”There was but a single candle in the room, and by its dim light, and that of the half-expired fire, they had not at first been able to see that they were not the sole occupants of the apartment. On the sofa lay curled the figure of a man breathing heavily, and, to judge by the spirit-bottle and glasses on the table at his hand, expiating a carouse by a disturbed and feverished slumber.The tutor raised the candle so that the light fell more clearly on the sleeper. Something in the figure had struck him. The man lay with his face turned towards them. He was stylishly though cheaply dressed. His age may have been forty, and his features were half obscured by a profuse and unkempt sandy beard. This was not what had struck the tutor. In his frequent turnings and tossings the sleeper had contrived to betray the fact that his hirsute appearance was due not to nature but to art. A wire hook had been displaced from the ear, leaving one side of the wig tilted so as to disclose underneath the smooth cheek of a clean-shaven man.The examination was still in process when Gustav re-entered the room. The clatter with which he put down the cups on the table, aided by the glare of the candle and the tutor’s sharp ejaculation, wakened the sleeper with a start. He was sober enough as he raised his head sharply and sprang to his feet. In doing this the treacherous wig slipped still farther. Before he could raise his hand to replace it Mr Armstrong had stepped forward and torn the mask from his face, disclosing the livid countenance of Mr Robert Ratman!The surprise on either side was at first beyond reach of words. The miscreant stood staring in a dazed way, first at Armstrong, then at Roger, then at Gustav, who, being a Frenchman, was the first to come to his use of his tongue.“Mon dieu! Monsieur, this is no bedroom for the gentleman. It is forbidden to sleep all night in thesalle à manger.”“Silence, Gustav! Go for a policeman,” said Armstrong in a tone so strange that the faithful Gustav slunk away like a dog with his tail between his legs.“Now, sir!” said the tutor as the door closed.The wretch made one wild effort at escape. He might have known by this time with whom he had to deal. Mr Armstrong held him by the wrist as in a vice.“It won’t do, Ratman,” said he. “The game is up. The best thing you can do is to stand quietly here till the police come.”The prisoner sullenly abandoned his struggle, and turned with a bitter sneer to Roger.“So you’ve run me down, have you? You’ve found your lost brother at last? I expected it. I was a fool to suppose you would lift a finger for me. There’s some chance of escaping from an enemy, but from a brother who has set himself to hound a brother to death, never. Never mind. Your money’s safe now. Have me hung as soon as you like; the sooner the better for me.”Roger, stupefied and stung to the quick by these taunts, winced as though he and not the speaker were the miscreant. He looked almost appealingly at his accuser, and tried to speak to justify himself, but the words refused to come.Suddenly he seemed to detect in the prisoner’s eye some new sinister purpose.“Take care, Armstrong; take care!” he cried, and flung himself between the two.It was not an instant too soon. With his free hand Ratman had contrived while talking to reach unheeded a pocket, from which he suddenly whipped a pistol, and, pounding on his captor, fired.The shot was badly and wildly aimed at the tutor’s face. Even at so short a distance it might have missed its mark altogether. Roger’s sudden intervention, however, found it an unexpected target. The lad’s up-flung hand caught the pistol at the moment it went off, and received in its palm the ball which had been intended for his friend.The sight of this untoward accident completely unnerved the prisoner. He sullenly let the weapon drop from his fingers, and with the air of a gambler who has played and lost his last stake, sank listlessly on the sofa on which not ten minutes before he had been sleeping.“Luck’s against me,” he said with an oath. “Look to the boy; I shan’t trouble you any more. I’ve done him harm enough without this. I wish I’d never heard of his elder brother.”The tutor, busy binding up his ward’s hand, only half heard the words; but Roger, amidst all his pain, heard it and looked up.“Then you are not my brother?” he said faintly.“Brother? No. And if you hadn’t left the papers about in your room a year ago I should never have known it was worth my while to pretend it.”When, a few moments later, Gustav entered with two constables, Mr Ratman welcomed the visitors with a sigh almost of relief, and placed himself quietly in their hands. As he passed the chair where Roger sat, half faint with pain and loss of blood, he stopped a moment and said—“Your brother! No. If I had been I shouldn’t have come to this.”About ten days later a small party was gathered in Roger’s cosy den at Maxfield.The young Squire was there, with his hand in a sling, still pale and weak, but able to sit up on the sofa and enjoy for the first time the society of a few choice friends. Among those friends it was not surprising to find Rosalind. That young lady had recently exchanged the duties of governess at the Vicarage for those of temporary sick-nurse at the manor-house, and to-night, in her simple mourning, with a flush of pleasure on her cheek as now and again she turned her eyes to the patient whose recovery did her care such credit she looked—at least Roger, an impartial witness, thought so—more beautiful than ever. But as Roger made the same discovery every time he and his nurse met, the opinion may be regarded as of relative value. Tom was there, enjoying himself as usual, indeed rather more than usual, because in the stable hard by, munching his oats, was a horse (the gift of the Squire) who owned him, Tom, as lord and master. Jill was there too, a little pensive as she looked round for some one who was not there, but trying hard to enjoy herself and seem glad. Besides these intimates there was Mr Headland, feeling like a father to everybody; Dr Brandram, in professional attendance; and the Vicar himself, accidentally present to congratulate his young parishioner on his recovery.The absentee of the evening was Mr Armstrong, who had gone to London the previous day on matters connected with the approaching assizes.“I wish Armstrong was here,” said Tom. “Won’t he open his eye when he sees ‘Crocodile’!”“Crocodile” was the name of the horse before mentioned.“It hardly seems like a party without him,” said Jill, blushing a little.“You were telling us about the letter written at sea,” said the vicar. “Of course, you heard nothing of the ship in London?”“Yes, I did,” said Roger. “After no end of disappointment, Armstrong suggested telegraphing to the post-master at Havana, off which the letter was written, you know, and we heard that there had been a ship called the ‘Cyclops’ ten years ago trading between the West Indies and Ceylon, but that nothing was known of any one of the name of Ingleton.”Rosalind looked up suddenly.“Ceylon and the West Indies?” exclaimed she. “Roger, did Mr Armstrong never tell you a story he once told me of a shark adventure which happened to him when he was a sailor on a ship trading between Ceylon and the West Indies?”The sudden silence which followed this inquiry was only broken by a low whistle of wonder from Tom.Roger, with a flush of colour on his pale cheeks, sat up and said, “What is the story?”Rosalind told it as nearly as possible in the tutor’s own words.“He did not tell you the name of the ship?” asked the doctor.“No.”“Or the name of the man who was killed?”“No.”There was another silence; it seemed as if they were sitting as witnesses to the completion of some curious tunnelling operation, when the party on one side suddenly catches sound of the pick-axe stroke of the party on the other. Step by step the lost Roger Ingleton had been tracked forward to the deck of this West India trading-ship; and backward, step by step, the tutor’s history went, till it almost touched the same point.“I expect,” said Tom, with a cheerfulness hardly in accord with the spirits of the company generally, “the fellow who was had by the shark was the one, and Armstrong never knew it.”The profound young man had dropped on the very idea which was present in the minds of each one.“Wal,” said the American mayor, “it may be so; but the question I’m asking myself is this: If so, it’s singular Mr Armstrong did not mention the coincidence when you got the cablegram.”“Oh,” said Roger, “at the time I was so cut up to find I’d failed after all, that I didn’t care to talk; and directly after that we met Ratman. He had no chance.”“I calculate I’d like to ask your tutor one or two pertinent questions,” said the Mayor.The meeting was fully with him, when Tom broke out again—“I say, I know. Let’s ask Gustav. He’s no end chummy with Armstrong. He might know a thing or two. He’s the chap I told you about at Christy’s minstrels,” continued Master Tom, warming up at the genial reminiscence.“Is that the French waiter down-stairs who helped bring you down from London?” asked the doctor.“Yes. I’m keeping him here as valet for the present. Armstrong mentioned, I remember, that he knew him.”“Ring him up,” said Tom.Gustav appeared, all smiles and shrugs and compliments.“Eh bien! my good gentleman,” said he, “I am ’appy to see you well. I wasmortifiéfor your mishap; but Mademoiselle—ah, Mademoiselle!”—here he raised his fingers gracefully to his lips—“ze angel step in where zepauvre garçonmay not walk. You could not but be well with a nurse socharmante. Ah, my friend, ’ow ’appy will be my good, kind friend when he return!”“You mean Mr Armstrong. Have you known him long?” asked Roger.“Pardieu! Ten, fifteen, twenty year; I know not how long. He is brother to me, your kind governor. He is to thepauvre pèrea son, and to thepetite Françoise—ah! quelle est morte!”“What was the name of your father?” demanded Roger, his hand tightening on Rosalind’s as he spoke.“Ah, Monsieur! a poor name; he is called like me, Gustav Callot.”The poor valet was thunderstruck by the sensation which his simple words caused. Surely the English gentlemen and ladies are beautiful listeners; no one ever paid him so much attention in his own country.The American mayor took up the examination.“I reckon,” drawled he, “that young man did not go by the name of Armstrong when you knew him.”“Ah, no! He has many names, my good, kind friend. It was Monsieur Rogers when we knew his finest. Ah! he act the comedy beautiful! Then when to came to cherish thepauvre pèrein Paris, and mourn with him the death ofla petite Françoise, he call himself by our poor name. Ah! gentlemen, he was good to us. All he save at ‘L’Hôtel Soult’ he share with us—andaprèsfrom the sea he even send us pay.”“What was his ship, do you remember?”“Shall I forget? He told us it had but one eye, and called itself ‘Cyclops’ Ah!mes amis,” continued Gustav, delighted with his audience and amazed at his own oratorical gifts, “he was much changed when I saw him next. ’Tis six, seven, eight years since. The beard is all shorn, the curl is cut off, the eye looks through a glass, and the laugh—hélas! gentlemen, the gay laugh of the boy Rogers is turned to the knit brow of the great man Armstrong.”The company had had enough of elocution for one evening, and dismissed the orator with flattering marks of consideration.The doctor and the vicar rose to go. Close friends of the family as they were, even they were superfluous at a time like this.But the American mayor remained.“I guess,” said he, “my nephew—”“Oh!” cried Jill, “then you are his uncle—dear, dear Mr Headland!” and the little maid flung herself into the astonished gentleman’s arms and relieved her emotions with a flood of tears.“Seems to me,” said he, looking down and kindly patting the fair head, “my nephew’s a hundred miles too far away at this minute.”American mayors are not as a rule endowed with gifts of prophecy, but it seemed as if there was an exception to the rule in the case of Mr Headland; for a moment later the door opened, and the tutor, eye-glass erect, and blissfully unconscious of the interest which his entry excited, strolled jauntily in.“Ah,” said he, “you’re still up, then. I just caught the last—”He stopped short, and the glass dropped abruptly from his eye. Roger had staggered to his feet and was standing with face aglow, stretching out his hand.The tutor comprehended all. He advanced and placed his arm in that of his brother.“You have found him at last, then, old fellow?”“Yes, and without your help.”The End.

For three hours that night the two friends, arm-in-arm, paced the empty streets, saying little, brooding much, yet gaining courage at every step. The touch of his guardian’s arm thrilled Roger now and again with a sensation of hope and relief in the midst of his dejection which almost surprised him. He had lost his brother; but was not this man as good as a brother to him? Would life be quite brotherless as long as he remained at his side?

The tutor, for his part, experienced a strange emotion too. The opening day had brought a crisis in his life as well as in that of his ward. It was a day to which he had long looked forward, partly with the dread of separation, partly with the joy of a man who has honestly done his work and is about to render up his trust. But was it all over now? No longer now was he a guardian or governor. Was he therefore to lose this gallant comrade, to whom all the brotherhood in his nature went out?

With reflections such as these it is scarcely to be wondered at that little was said during that long aimless walk.

At last Roger shivered.

“Let’s turn in,” said Mr Armstrong.

They were in a street off the Strand, a long way from their hotel, and no cab in sight.

“Any place will do,” said Roger. “Why not this?” and he pointed to the door of a seedy-looking private hotel, over which a lamp burned with the legend—“Night porter in attendance.”

The tutor surveyed the house curiously through his and then said—

“Quite so; I stayed here once before,” and rang the bell.

The door was opened by a person of whose nationality there could be little doubt, particularly when, after a momentary inspection of his belated guests, he uttered an exclamation of joy and accosted the tutor—

“Mon ami! Oh! I am glad to see you, my good friend. Friend of mypauvre père!—friend of my youth! It is you. Ah, Monsieur!” added he, addressing Roger, “for your friend’s sake you are welcome.Entrez!”

“Be quiet now, Gustav,” said the tutor. “Bring us come coffee in the coffee-room, if you can get it made, and light a fire in the bedroom. We will talk in the morning.”

Gustav gesticulated delighted acquiescence in any demand his hero made, and ushered them into the coffee-room.

“What a queer fellow!” said Roger when he had vanished in search of the coffee.

“Queer but good-hearted fellow is Gustav,” said the tutor. “I have known him a long time; to-morrow I’ll tell you— Hullo!”

There was but a single candle in the room, and by its dim light, and that of the half-expired fire, they had not at first been able to see that they were not the sole occupants of the apartment. On the sofa lay curled the figure of a man breathing heavily, and, to judge by the spirit-bottle and glasses on the table at his hand, expiating a carouse by a disturbed and feverished slumber.

The tutor raised the candle so that the light fell more clearly on the sleeper. Something in the figure had struck him. The man lay with his face turned towards them. He was stylishly though cheaply dressed. His age may have been forty, and his features were half obscured by a profuse and unkempt sandy beard. This was not what had struck the tutor. In his frequent turnings and tossings the sleeper had contrived to betray the fact that his hirsute appearance was due not to nature but to art. A wire hook had been displaced from the ear, leaving one side of the wig tilted so as to disclose underneath the smooth cheek of a clean-shaven man.

The examination was still in process when Gustav re-entered the room. The clatter with which he put down the cups on the table, aided by the glare of the candle and the tutor’s sharp ejaculation, wakened the sleeper with a start. He was sober enough as he raised his head sharply and sprang to his feet. In doing this the treacherous wig slipped still farther. Before he could raise his hand to replace it Mr Armstrong had stepped forward and torn the mask from his face, disclosing the livid countenance of Mr Robert Ratman!

The surprise on either side was at first beyond reach of words. The miscreant stood staring in a dazed way, first at Armstrong, then at Roger, then at Gustav, who, being a Frenchman, was the first to come to his use of his tongue.

“Mon dieu! Monsieur, this is no bedroom for the gentleman. It is forbidden to sleep all night in thesalle à manger.”

“Silence, Gustav! Go for a policeman,” said Armstrong in a tone so strange that the faithful Gustav slunk away like a dog with his tail between his legs.

“Now, sir!” said the tutor as the door closed.

The wretch made one wild effort at escape. He might have known by this time with whom he had to deal. Mr Armstrong held him by the wrist as in a vice.

“It won’t do, Ratman,” said he. “The game is up. The best thing you can do is to stand quietly here till the police come.”

The prisoner sullenly abandoned his struggle, and turned with a bitter sneer to Roger.

“So you’ve run me down, have you? You’ve found your lost brother at last? I expected it. I was a fool to suppose you would lift a finger for me. There’s some chance of escaping from an enemy, but from a brother who has set himself to hound a brother to death, never. Never mind. Your money’s safe now. Have me hung as soon as you like; the sooner the better for me.”

Roger, stupefied and stung to the quick by these taunts, winced as though he and not the speaker were the miscreant. He looked almost appealingly at his accuser, and tried to speak to justify himself, but the words refused to come.

Suddenly he seemed to detect in the prisoner’s eye some new sinister purpose.

“Take care, Armstrong; take care!” he cried, and flung himself between the two.

It was not an instant too soon. With his free hand Ratman had contrived while talking to reach unheeded a pocket, from which he suddenly whipped a pistol, and, pounding on his captor, fired.

The shot was badly and wildly aimed at the tutor’s face. Even at so short a distance it might have missed its mark altogether. Roger’s sudden intervention, however, found it an unexpected target. The lad’s up-flung hand caught the pistol at the moment it went off, and received in its palm the ball which had been intended for his friend.

The sight of this untoward accident completely unnerved the prisoner. He sullenly let the weapon drop from his fingers, and with the air of a gambler who has played and lost his last stake, sank listlessly on the sofa on which not ten minutes before he had been sleeping.

“Luck’s against me,” he said with an oath. “Look to the boy; I shan’t trouble you any more. I’ve done him harm enough without this. I wish I’d never heard of his elder brother.”

The tutor, busy binding up his ward’s hand, only half heard the words; but Roger, amidst all his pain, heard it and looked up.

“Then you are not my brother?” he said faintly.

“Brother? No. And if you hadn’t left the papers about in your room a year ago I should never have known it was worth my while to pretend it.”

When, a few moments later, Gustav entered with two constables, Mr Ratman welcomed the visitors with a sigh almost of relief, and placed himself quietly in their hands. As he passed the chair where Roger sat, half faint with pain and loss of blood, he stopped a moment and said—

“Your brother! No. If I had been I shouldn’t have come to this.”

About ten days later a small party was gathered in Roger’s cosy den at Maxfield.

The young Squire was there, with his hand in a sling, still pale and weak, but able to sit up on the sofa and enjoy for the first time the society of a few choice friends. Among those friends it was not surprising to find Rosalind. That young lady had recently exchanged the duties of governess at the Vicarage for those of temporary sick-nurse at the manor-house, and to-night, in her simple mourning, with a flush of pleasure on her cheek as now and again she turned her eyes to the patient whose recovery did her care such credit she looked—at least Roger, an impartial witness, thought so—more beautiful than ever. But as Roger made the same discovery every time he and his nurse met, the opinion may be regarded as of relative value. Tom was there, enjoying himself as usual, indeed rather more than usual, because in the stable hard by, munching his oats, was a horse (the gift of the Squire) who owned him, Tom, as lord and master. Jill was there too, a little pensive as she looked round for some one who was not there, but trying hard to enjoy herself and seem glad. Besides these intimates there was Mr Headland, feeling like a father to everybody; Dr Brandram, in professional attendance; and the Vicar himself, accidentally present to congratulate his young parishioner on his recovery.

The absentee of the evening was Mr Armstrong, who had gone to London the previous day on matters connected with the approaching assizes.

“I wish Armstrong was here,” said Tom. “Won’t he open his eye when he sees ‘Crocodile’!”

“Crocodile” was the name of the horse before mentioned.

“It hardly seems like a party without him,” said Jill, blushing a little.

“You were telling us about the letter written at sea,” said the vicar. “Of course, you heard nothing of the ship in London?”

“Yes, I did,” said Roger. “After no end of disappointment, Armstrong suggested telegraphing to the post-master at Havana, off which the letter was written, you know, and we heard that there had been a ship called the ‘Cyclops’ ten years ago trading between the West Indies and Ceylon, but that nothing was known of any one of the name of Ingleton.”

Rosalind looked up suddenly.

“Ceylon and the West Indies?” exclaimed she. “Roger, did Mr Armstrong never tell you a story he once told me of a shark adventure which happened to him when he was a sailor on a ship trading between Ceylon and the West Indies?”

The sudden silence which followed this inquiry was only broken by a low whistle of wonder from Tom.

Roger, with a flush of colour on his pale cheeks, sat up and said, “What is the story?”

Rosalind told it as nearly as possible in the tutor’s own words.

“He did not tell you the name of the ship?” asked the doctor.

“No.”

“Or the name of the man who was killed?”

“No.”

There was another silence; it seemed as if they were sitting as witnesses to the completion of some curious tunnelling operation, when the party on one side suddenly catches sound of the pick-axe stroke of the party on the other. Step by step the lost Roger Ingleton had been tracked forward to the deck of this West India trading-ship; and backward, step by step, the tutor’s history went, till it almost touched the same point.

“I expect,” said Tom, with a cheerfulness hardly in accord with the spirits of the company generally, “the fellow who was had by the shark was the one, and Armstrong never knew it.”

The profound young man had dropped on the very idea which was present in the minds of each one.

“Wal,” said the American mayor, “it may be so; but the question I’m asking myself is this: If so, it’s singular Mr Armstrong did not mention the coincidence when you got the cablegram.”

“Oh,” said Roger, “at the time I was so cut up to find I’d failed after all, that I didn’t care to talk; and directly after that we met Ratman. He had no chance.”

“I calculate I’d like to ask your tutor one or two pertinent questions,” said the Mayor.

The meeting was fully with him, when Tom broke out again—

“I say, I know. Let’s ask Gustav. He’s no end chummy with Armstrong. He might know a thing or two. He’s the chap I told you about at Christy’s minstrels,” continued Master Tom, warming up at the genial reminiscence.

“Is that the French waiter down-stairs who helped bring you down from London?” asked the doctor.

“Yes. I’m keeping him here as valet for the present. Armstrong mentioned, I remember, that he knew him.”

“Ring him up,” said Tom.

Gustav appeared, all smiles and shrugs and compliments.

“Eh bien! my good gentleman,” said he, “I am ’appy to see you well. I wasmortifiéfor your mishap; but Mademoiselle—ah, Mademoiselle!”—here he raised his fingers gracefully to his lips—“ze angel step in where zepauvre garçonmay not walk. You could not but be well with a nurse socharmante. Ah, my friend, ’ow ’appy will be my good, kind friend when he return!”

“You mean Mr Armstrong. Have you known him long?” asked Roger.

“Pardieu! Ten, fifteen, twenty year; I know not how long. He is brother to me, your kind governor. He is to thepauvre pèrea son, and to thepetite Françoise—ah! quelle est morte!”

“What was the name of your father?” demanded Roger, his hand tightening on Rosalind’s as he spoke.

“Ah, Monsieur! a poor name; he is called like me, Gustav Callot.”

The poor valet was thunderstruck by the sensation which his simple words caused. Surely the English gentlemen and ladies are beautiful listeners; no one ever paid him so much attention in his own country.

The American mayor took up the examination.

“I reckon,” drawled he, “that young man did not go by the name of Armstrong when you knew him.”

“Ah, no! He has many names, my good, kind friend. It was Monsieur Rogers when we knew his finest. Ah! he act the comedy beautiful! Then when to came to cherish thepauvre pèrein Paris, and mourn with him the death ofla petite Françoise, he call himself by our poor name. Ah! gentlemen, he was good to us. All he save at ‘L’Hôtel Soult’ he share with us—andaprèsfrom the sea he even send us pay.”

“What was his ship, do you remember?”

“Shall I forget? He told us it had but one eye, and called itself ‘Cyclops’ Ah!mes amis,” continued Gustav, delighted with his audience and amazed at his own oratorical gifts, “he was much changed when I saw him next. ’Tis six, seven, eight years since. The beard is all shorn, the curl is cut off, the eye looks through a glass, and the laugh—hélas! gentlemen, the gay laugh of the boy Rogers is turned to the knit brow of the great man Armstrong.”

The company had had enough of elocution for one evening, and dismissed the orator with flattering marks of consideration.

The doctor and the vicar rose to go. Close friends of the family as they were, even they were superfluous at a time like this.

But the American mayor remained.

“I guess,” said he, “my nephew—”

“Oh!” cried Jill, “then you are his uncle—dear, dear Mr Headland!” and the little maid flung herself into the astonished gentleman’s arms and relieved her emotions with a flood of tears.

“Seems to me,” said he, looking down and kindly patting the fair head, “my nephew’s a hundred miles too far away at this minute.”

American mayors are not as a rule endowed with gifts of prophecy, but it seemed as if there was an exception to the rule in the case of Mr Headland; for a moment later the door opened, and the tutor, eye-glass erect, and blissfully unconscious of the interest which his entry excited, strolled jauntily in.

“Ah,” said he, “you’re still up, then. I just caught the last—”

He stopped short, and the glass dropped abruptly from his eye. Roger had staggered to his feet and was standing with face aglow, stretching out his hand.

The tutor comprehended all. He advanced and placed his arm in that of his brother.

“You have found him at last, then, old fellow?”

“Yes, and without your help.”

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