CARAMEL COTTAGE
III.—DON THE SECOND
I
We have a saying in England, “It never rains but it pours,” as applied, not to the rain, but to the occurrences of daily life. Dyke Manor was generally quiet enough, but on Thursday evening—the Thursday already told of—we were destined to have visitors. First of all, arrived Mr. Jacobson, our neighbour at Elm Farm, with his nephew, young Harry Dene; he had his gig put up, meaning to make an evening of it. It turned out to be a night, or nearly so, as you will soon find. Close upon that, Charles Stirling of the Court (my place) came in; and Mrs. Todhetley went to the kitchen to say that we should require supper. The stirring events of the week had brought them over—namely, the encounter on our land between the poachers and the keepers, and the flight of the valuable yard dog, Don, a Newfoundland.
That afternoon, Thursday, we had heard, as may be remembered, that Don was at Evesham, under the keeping of Mr. Dick Standish; and I had been told by Katrine Barbary that Mr. Reste had suddenly and unexpectedly disappeared from Caramel Cottage. Old Jacobson predicted that Dick Standish would come to be hanged; Charles Stirling said he ought to be transported.
“Of course you will prosecute him, Squire?” said Charles Stirling.
“Of course I shall,” replied the Squire, warmly. “The police have him already safe enough if they’ve done their duty, and I shall be over at Evesham in the morning.”
After a jolly supper they got to their pipes, and the time went by on wings. At least, that’s what the master of Elm Farm said when the clocks struck eleven, and he asked leave to order his gig.
It was brought round by Giles, the groom; and we were all assembled in the hall to speed the departure, when old Jones, the constable, burst in upon us at the full speed of his gouty legs, his face in a white heat.
Private information had reached Jones half an hour ago that the poachers intended to be out again that night, but he could not learn in which direction.
Then commotion arose. The Squire and his friend Jacobson were like two demented wild Indians, uncertain what was best to be done to entrap the villains. The gig was ordered away again.
Some time passed in discussion. In these moments of excitement one cannot always bring one’s keenest wits to the fore. Charles Stirling offered to go out and reconnoitre; we, you may be quite sure, were eager to second him. I went with Charles Stirling one way; Tod and Harry Dene went another—leaving the Squire and Mr. Jacobson at the gate, listening for shots, and conferring in whispers with old Jones.
How long we marched about under the bright moonlight, keeping under the shade of the trees and hedges, I cannot tell you; but when we all four met at Dyke Neck, which lay between the Manor and the Court, we had seen nothing. Mr. Stirling went straight home then, but we continued our ramblings. A schoolboy’s ardour is not quickly damped.
Beating about fresh ground together for a little while, we then separated. I went across towards the village: the other two elsewhere. It was one of the loveliest of nights, the full moon bright as day, the air warm and soft. But I neither saw nor heard signs of any poachers, and I began to suspect that somebody had played a trick on the old constable.
I turned short back at the thought, and made, as the Americans say, tracks for home. My nearest way was through the dense grove of trees at the back of Caramel Farm, and I took it, though it was not the liveliest way by any means.
But no sooner was I beyond the grove than sounds struck on my ear in the stillness of the night. They seemed to come from the direction of Caramel Cottage. Darting under the side hedge, and then across the side lane, and so under the hedge again that bound the cottage, I stole on the grass as softly as a mouse. Poachers could not be at work there; but an idea flashed across me that somebody had got into Mr. Barbary’s well-stocked garden, and was robbing it.
Peering through the hedge, I saw Barbary himself. He was coming out of the brewhouse, dragging behind him, with two cords, a huge sack of some kind, well-filled and heavy. Opposite the open door, on the furnace, shone a lighted horn lantern. Mr. Barbary pushed-to the door behind him, thereby shutting out the light, dragged his burden over the yard to the garden, and let it fall into what looked like—a freshly dug grave.
Astonishment kept me intensely still. What did it all mean? Hardly daring to breathe, I stole in at the gate and under the shade of the hedge. Whatever it might contain, that sacking lay perfectly quiet, and Mr. Barbary began to shovel in the spadefuls of earth upon it, as one does upon a coffin.
This was nothing for me to interfere with, and I went away silently. It looked like a mystery, and a dark one; any way it was being done in secret in the witching hours of the night. What the time might be I knew not, the Squire having ordered our watches taken off before starting: perhaps one, or two, or three o’clock.
Tod and Harry Dene reached the gate of Dyke Manor just as I did; and we were greeted, all three, with a storm of reproaches by the Squire and Mr. Jacobson. What did we mean by it?—scampering off like that for hours?—for hours!—Three times had the gig been brought out and put up again! Harry was bundled headforemost into the gig, and Mr. Jacobson drove off.
And it turned out that my suspicion touching old Jones was right. Some young men had played the trick upon him. I need not have mentioned it at all, but for seeing what I did see in Barbary’s garden.
How Katrine Barbary passed that night you have seen: for, like many another story-teller, I have had to carry you back a few hours. Shivering and shaking, now hot, now cold, she lay, striving to reason with herself that it could not be; that so dreadful a thing was not possible; that she was the most wicked girl on earth for imagining it: and she strove in vain. All the events of the past day or two kept crowding into her mind one upon another in flaring colours, like the figures in some hideous phantasmagoria. The unexpected arrival of the bank-notes for Mr. Reste; her father’s covetous look at them and his dreadful joke; their going out together that night poaching; their quarrelling together the next morning; their worse quarrelling at night, and their dashing out to the yard (as if in passion) one after the other. And, so far as Katrine could trace it, that was the very last seen or heard of Edgar Reste. The next morning he was gone; gone in a mysterious manner, leaving all his possessions behind him. Her father was reticent over it; would not explain. Then came the little episode of the locked-up brewhouse, which had never been locked before in Joan’s memory. Mr. Barbary refused to unlock it, said he had put some wine there; told Joan she must do without the jack. What had really been hidden in that brewhouse? Katrine felt faint at the thought. Not wine. And the terrible farce of packing Mr. Reste’s effects and addressing them to Euston Square Station, London! Would they lie there for ever—unclaimed? Alas, alas! The proofs were only too palpable. Edgar Reste had been put out of the world for ever. She had been the shivering witness to his secret burial.
“What’s the matter, Katrine? Are you ill?”
The inquiry was made by Mr. Barbary next day at breakfast. Sick unto death she looked. The very bright night had given place to a showery morning, and the rain pattered against the window-panes.
“I have a headache,” answered Katrine, faintly.
“Better send Joan to the Manor to say you cannot attend to-day.”
“Oh, I would rather go; I must go,” she said hastily. For this good girl had been schooling herself as well as she knew how; making up her mind to persevere in fulfilling the daily duties of her life in the best way she should be able; lest, if she fell short abruptly, suspicion might turn towards her father. She had wildly prayed Heaven to grant her strength and help to bear up on her course. Not from her must come the pointing finger of discovery. It is true that he—Edgar—was her first and dearest love; she should never love another as she had loved him; but she was her father’s child, and held him sacred.
“Why must you go?” demanded Mr. Barbary, as, having finished a plate of broiled mushrooms, he began upon a couple of eggs with an appetite that the night’s work did not seem to have spoiled.
“The air—the walk—may do me good.”
“Well, you know best, child. I suppose Todhetley be off to Evesham after that dog of theirs,” Mr. Barbary went on to remark. “Master Dick Standish must be a bold sinner to steal the dog one day and parade the open streets with it the next! If– What is it now, Joan?”
For old Joan had come in with a face of surprise. “Sir,” she cried, “has Tom Noah been at work here this morning?”
“Not that I know of,” replied Mr. Barbary. Tom Noah, an industrious young fellow, son to Noah, the gardener, was occasionally employed by Mr. Barbary to clean up the yard and clear the garden of its superfluous rubbish.
“Our back’us has been scrubbed out this morning, sir,” went on Joan, still in astonishment. “And it didn’t want it. Who in the world can have come in and gone and done it?”
“Nonsense,” said Mr. Barbary.
“But it has, master; scrubbed clean; the flags are all wet still. And the rain-water barrel’s a’most empty, nearly every drop of water drawn out of it! I’d not say but the yard has had a bit of a scrubbing, too, near the garden, as well as the back’us.”
“Nonsense!” repeated Mr. Barbary, his light tone becoming irritable. “You see it has been raining! the rain has drifted into the brewhouse, that’s all; I left the door open last night. There! go back to your work.”
Joan was a simple-natured woman, but she was neither silly nor blind, and she knew that what she said was true. Rapidly turning the matter over in her mind, she came to the conclusion that Tom Noah had been in “unbeknown to the master,” and so left the subject.
“I suppose I may take out the spare jack now, sir?” she waited to say.
“Take out anything you like,” replied Mr. Barbary.
Afraid of her tell-tale face, Katrine had moved to the window, apparently to look at the weather. Too well she knew who had scrubbed out the place, and why.
The rain had ceased when she set off on her short walk—for it was not much more than a stone’s throw to the Manor; the sun was struggling from behind the clouds, blue sky could be seen. Alone with herself and the open country, Katrine gave vent to her pent-up spirit, which she had not dared to do indoors; sighs of anguish and of pain escaped her; she wondered whether it would be wrong if she prayed to die. But some one was advancing to meet her, and she composed her countenance.
It was Ben Gibbon. For the past week or so, since Katrine had been enlightened as to her father’s poaching propensities, she had somehow feared this man. He was son to the late James Gibbon, the former gamekeeper at Chavasse Grange, and brother to the present keeper, Richard. Of course one might expect that Mr. Benjamin would protect game and gamekeepers; instead of which, he was known to do a little safe poaching on his own account, and to be an idle fellow altogether. Katrine did not like his intimacy with her father, and she could not forget that he had passed part of that fatal evening with him and Edgar Reste.
“Showery weather to-day, miss,” was Ben Gibbon’s salutation.
“Yes, it is,” answered Katrine, with intense civility—for how could she tell what the man might know?
“I suppose I shall find Mr. Barbary at home?”
“Oh, yes,” faintly spoke she, and passed on her way.
II
We started for Evesham under a sharp shower, the Squire driving Bob and Blister in the large phaeton. Tod sat with him, I and the groom behind. Not a shadow of doubt lay on any one of us that we should bring back Don in triumph—leaving Dick Standish to be dealt with according to his merits. But, as the Squire remarked later, we were not a match for Dick in cunning.
“Keep your eyes open, lads,” the Squire said to us as we approached the town. “And if you see Dick Standish, with or without the dog, jump out and pounce upon him. You hear, Giles?”
“No need to tell me to do it, sir,” answered Giles humbly, clenching his fists; he had been eating humble pie ever since Tuesday night. “I am ready.”
But Dick Standish was not seen. Leaving the carriage and Giles at the inn, we made our way to the police station. An officer named Brett attended to us. It was curious enough, but the first person we saw inside the station was Tobias Jellico, who had called in on some matter of business that concerned his shop.
“We had your message yesterday, sir,” said Brett to the Squire, “and we lost no time in seeing after Standish. But it is not your dog that he has with him.”
“Not my dog!” repeated the Squire, up in arms at once. “Don’t tell me that, Brett. Whose dog should it be but mine? Come!”
“Well, sir, I never saw your dog; but Tomkins, one of our men, who has often been on duty at Church Dykely, knows it well,” rejoined Brett. “We had Standish and the dog up here, and Tomkins at once said it was not your dog at all, so we let the man go. Mr. Jellico also says it is not yours; I was talking to him about it now.”
“What I said was this,” put in Jellico, stepping forward, and speaking with meek deprecation. “If Squire Todhetley’s dog has been described to me correctly, the dog I saw with Standish yesterday can’t be the same. It is a great big ugly dog, with tan marks about his white coat–”
“Ugly!” retorted the Squire, resenting the aspersion, for he fully believed it to be Don.
“It is not at all an ugly dog, it’s a handsome dog,” spoke up Brett. “Perhaps Mr. Jellico does not like dogs.”
“Not much,” confessed Jellico.
“How came you to say yesterday at Church Dykely that it was the same dog?” Tod asked the man.
“If you please, sir, I didn’t exactly say it was; I said I made no doubt of it,” returned Jellico, mild as new milk. “It was in this way: Perkins the butcher was standing at his shop door as I passed down the street. We began talking, and he told me about the poachers having been out on the Tuesday night, and that Squire Todhetley had lost his fine Newfoundland dog; he said it was thought the Standishes were in both games. So then I said I had met Dick Standish with just such a dog that morning as I was a-coming out of Evesham. I had never seen the Squire’s dog, you perceive, gentlemen; but neither Mr. Perkins nor me had any doubt it was his.”
“And it must be mine,” returned the Squire, hotly. “Send for the dog, Brett; I will see it. Send for Standish also.”
“I’ll send, sir,” replied Brett, rather dubiously, “and get the man here if he is to be had. The chances are that with all this bother Standish has left the town and taken the dog with him.”
Brett was a talkative man, with a mottled face and sandy hair. He despatched a messenger to see after Standish. Jellico went out at the same time, telling Brett that his business could wait till another day.
“I know it is my dog,” affirmed the Squire to Brett while he waited. Nothing on earth, except actual sight, would have convinced him that it was not his. “Those loose men play all sorts of cunning tricks. Dick Standish is full of them. I shouldn’t wonder but he has painted the dog; done his black marks over with brown paint—or green.”
“We’ve a dyer in this town, Squire,” related Brett; “he owns a little white curly dog, and he dyes him as an advertisement for his colours, and lets him run about on the pavement before the shop door. To-day the dog will be a delicate sky-blue, to-morrow a flaming scarlet; the next day he’ll be a beautiful orange, with a green tail. The neighbours’ dogs collect round and stand looking at him from a respectful distance, uncertain, I suppose, whether he is of the dog species, or not.”
I laughed.
“Passing the shop the other day, I saw the dog sitting on the door-step,” ran on Brett. “He was bright purple that time. An old lady, driving by in her chariot, caught sight of the dog and called to the coachman to pull up. There she sat, that old lady, entranced with amazement, staring through her eye-glass at what she took to be a phenomenon in nature. Five minutes, full, she stared, and couldn’t tear herself away. It is true, gentlemen, I assure you.”
Mr. Dick Standish was found, and brought before us. He looked rather more disreputable than usual, his old fustian coat out at elbows, a spotted red handkerchief twisted loosely round his neck. The dog was with him, and it was not ours. A large, fine dog, as already described, though much less handsome than Don, and out of condition, his curly coat a yellowish white, the marks on it of real tan colour, not painted.
Dick’s account, after vehemently protesting he had nothing to do with the poaching affair on Tuesday night, was never for a minute out of his bed—was this: The dog belonged to one of the stable-helpers at Leet Hall; but the man had determined to have the dog shot, not being satisfied with him of late, for the animal had turned odd and uncertain in his behaviour. Dick Standish heard of this. Understanding dogs thoroughly, and believing that this dog only wanted a certain course of treatment to put him right, Standish walked to Church Leet on Wednesday morning last from Church Dykely, and asked the man, Brazer, to give him the dog—he would take him and run all risks. Brazer refused at first; but, after a bit, agreed to let Standish keep the dog for a time. If he cured the dog, Brazer was to have him back again, paying Standish for his keep and care; but if not satisfied with the dog, Standish might keep him for good. Standish brought the dog away, and took him straight to Evesham, walking the whole way and getting there about nine o’clock in the evening. He was doctoring the dog well, and hoped to cure him.
Whether this tale was true or whether it wasn’t, none of us could contradict it. But there was an appearance of fear, of shuffling in the man’s manner, which seemed to indicate that something lay behind.
“It’s every word gospel, ain’t it, Rove, and no lie nowhere,” cried Standish, bending to pat the dog, while the corner of his eye was turned to regard the aspect of the company. “You’ve blown me up for many things before now, Squire Todhetley, but there’s no call, sir, to accuse me this time.”
“When did you hear about this dog of Brazer’s, and who told you of it?” inquired Tod, in his haughty way.
“’Twas Bill Rimmer, sir; he telled me on Tuesday night,” replied Dick. “And I said to him what a shame it was to talk of destroying that there fine dog, and that Brazer was a soft for thinking on’t. And I said, young Mr. Todhetley, that I’d be over at Church Leet first thing the next morning, to see if he’d give the dog to me.”
“It is not my dog, I see that,” spoke the Squire, breaking the silence that followed Dick’s speech; “and it may be the stableman’s at Leet Hall; that’s a thing readily ascertained. Do you know where my dog is, Dick Standish?”
“No, I don’t know, sir,” replied the man in a very eager tone; “and I never knowed at all, till fetched to this police station yesterday, that your dog was a-missing. I’ll swear I didn’t.”
There was nothing more to be done, but to accept the failure, and leave the station, after privately charging the police to keep an eye on clever Mr. Dick Standish, his haunts, and his movements.
In the afternoon we drove back home, not best pleased with the day’s work. A sense of having been done, in some way or other not at present explicable, lay on most of us.
It appeared that the groom shared this feeling strongly. In passing through the yard, I came upon him in his shirt sleeves, seated outside the stable door on an inverted bucket. His elbows on his knees and his face in his hands, he looked the image of despair. The picture arrested me. Mack was rubbing down the horses; a duty Giles rarely entrusted to anybody. He was fond of Don, and had been ready to hang himself ever since Tuesday night.
“Why, Giles! what’s the matter?”
“Matter enough, Master Johnny, when a false villyan like that Dick Standish can take the master, and the police their-selves, and everybody else, in!” was his answer. “I felt as cock-sure, sir, that we should bring home Don as I am that the sky above us is shining out blue after the last shower.”
“But it was not Don, you see, Giles.”
“He wasn’t; the dog Standish had to show,” returned Giles, with a peculiar emphasis. “Dick had got up his tale all smooth and sleek, sir.”
“How do you know he had?”
“Because he told it me over again—the one he said he had been telling at the police station, Master Johnny. I was standing outside the inn yard while you were all in at lunch, and Standish came by as bold as brass, Brazer’s dog, Rover, leashed to his hand.”
“I suppose it is Brazer’s dog?”
“Oh, it’s Brazer’s dog, that’un be,” said Giles, with a deep amount of scorn; “I know him well enough.”
“Then how can it be Don? And we could not bring home another man’s dog.”
Giles paused. His eyes had a far-off look in them, as if seeking for something they could not find.
“Master Johnny,” he said, “I can’t rightly grasp things. All the way home I’ve been trying to put two and two together, I am trying at it still, and I can’t do it anyhow. Don’t it seem odd to you, sir, that Standish should have got Brazer’s dog, Rover, into his hands just at the very time we are suspecting he has got Don into ’em?”
I did not know. I had not thought about it.
“He has that dog of Brazer’s as a blind. A blind, and nothing else, sir. He has captured our dog, safe and sure, and is keeping him hid up somewhere till the first storm of the search is over, when he’ll be able to dispose of him safely.”
I could not see Giles’s drift, or how the one dog could help to conceal the possession of the other.
“Well, sir, I can’t explain it better,” he answered; “I can’t fit the pieces of the puzzle into one another in my mind yet. But I am positive it is so. Dick Standish has made up the farce about Brazer’s dog and got him into his hands to throw dust in our eyes and keep us off the scent of Don.”
I began to see the groom might be right; and that the Standishes, sly and crafty, were keeping Don in hiding.
Mrs. Todhetley had met us with a face of concern. Lena’s throat was becoming very bad indeed, and Mr. Duffham did not like the look of it at all. He had already come twice that day.
“I think, Johnny,” said the mother to me, “that we had better stop Miss Barbary’s coming to-morrow; Mr. Duffham does not know but the malady may be getting infectious. Suppose you go now to the cottage and tell her.”
So I went off to do so, and found her ill. On this same Friday afternoon, having occasion to ask some question of her father, who was in the garden, she found him planting greens on the plot of ground—the grave—under the summer-apple tree. Before she could speak, a shudder of terror seized her; she trembled from head to foot, turned back to the kitchen, and sat down on the nearest chair.
Old Joan pronounced it to be an attack of ague; Miss Katrine, she said, must have taken a chill. Perhaps she had. It was just then that I arrived and found her shivering in the kitchen. Joan ran up to her room in the garret to bring down some powder she kept there, said to be a grand remedy for ague.
It was getting dusk then; the sun had set. To me, Katrine seemed to be shaking with terror, not illness. Mr. Barbary, in full view of the window, was planting the winter greens under the summer-apple tree.
“What is it that you are frightened at?” I said, propping my back against the kitchen mantelpiece.
“I must ask you a question, Johnny Ludlow,” she whispered, panting and shivering. “Was it you who came and stood inside the gate there in the middle of last night?”
“Yes it was. And I saw what Mr. Barbary was doing—there. I could not make it out.”
Katrine left her chair and placed herself before me. Clasping her piteous hands, she besought me to be silent; to keep the secret for pity sake—to be true. All kinds of odd ideas stole across me. I would not listen to them; only promised her that I would tell nothing, would be true for ever and a day.
“It must have been an accident, you know,” she pleaded; “it must have been an accident.”
Joan came back, and I took my departure. What on earth could Katrine have meant? All kinds of fancies were troubling my brain, fit only for what in these later days are called the penny dreadfuls, and I did my best to drive them out of it.
The next morning Katrine was really ill. Her throat was parched, her body ached with fever. As to Lena, she was worse; and we, who ought to have gone back to school that day, were kept at home lest we should carry with us any infection.
“All right,” said Tod. “It’s an ill wind that blows nobody good.” He did not believe in the infection; told me in private that Duffham was an old woman.
Can any one picture, I wonder, Katrine Barbary’s distress of mind, the terrible dread that had taken possession of it? Shuddering dread, amounting to a panic: dread of the deed itself, dread for her father, dread of discovery.
On the following morning, Sunday, a letter was delivered at Caramel Cottage for Mr. Reste, the postmark being London, the writing in the same hand as the last—Captain Amphlett’s. Mr. Barbary took it away to his gun-room; Katrine saw it, later in the day, lying on the deal-table there, unopened.
The next Thursday afternoon, Lena being then almost well—for children are dying to-day and running about again to-morrow—I called at the Cottage to ask after Katrine. We heard she had an attack of fever. The weather was lovely again; the October sky blue as in summer, the sun hot and bright.
Well, she did look ill! She sat in the parlour at the open window, a huge shawl on, and her poor face about half the size it was before. What had it been, I asked, and she said ague; but she was much better now and intended to be at the Manor again on Monday.
“Sit down please, Johnny. I suppose Lena has been glad of the holiday?”
“She just has. That young lady believes French was invented for her especial torment. Have you heard from Mr. Reste, Katrine?–What does he say about his impromptu flitting?”
She turned white as a ghost, never answering, looking at me strangely. I thought a spasm might have seized her.
“Not yet,” she faintly said. “Papa thinks—thinks he may have gone abroad.”
While I was digesting the words, some vehicle was heard rattling up the side lane; it turned the corner and stopped at the gate. “Why, Katrine,” I said, “it is a railway fly from Evesham!”
A little fair man in a grey travelling-suit got out of the fly, came up the path, and knocked at the door. Old Joan answered it and showed him into the room. “Captain Amphlett,” she said. Katrine looked ready to die.
“I must apologize for intruding,” he began, with a pleasant voice and manner. “My friend Edgar Reste is staying here, I believe.”
Katrine was taken with a shivering fit. The stranger looked at her with curiosity. I said she had been ill with ague, and was about to add that Edgar Reste had left, when Mr. Barbary came in. Captain Amphlett turned to him and went on to explain: he was on his way to spend a little time in one of the Midland shires, and had halted at Evesham for the purpose of looking up Edgar Reste—from whom he had been expecting to hear more than a week past; could not understand why he did not. Mr. Barbary, with all the courtesy of the finished gentleman, told him, in reply to this, that Edgar Reste had left Caramel Cottage a week ago.
“Dear me!” cried the stranger, evidently surprised. “And without writing to tell me. Was his departure unexpected?”
Mr. Barbary laughed lightly. That man would have retained his calmest presence of mind when going down in a wreck at sea. “Some matter of business called him away, I fancy,” he replied.
“And to what part of England was he going?” asked Captain Amphlett, after a pause. “Did he say?”
Mr. Barbary appeared to have an impulsive answer on his lips, but closed them before he could speak it. He glanced at me, and then turned his head and glanced at Katrine, as if to see whether she was there, for he was sitting with his back to her. A thought struck me that we were in the way of his plain speaking.
“He went to London,” said Mr. Barbary.
“To London!” echoed the Captain. “Why, that’s strange. He has not come to London, I assure you.”
“I can assure you it is where he told me he was going,” said Mr. Barbary, smiling. “And it was to London his luggage was addressed.”
“Well, it is altogether strange,” repeated Captain Amphlett. “I went to his chambers in the Temple yesterday, and Farnham, the barrister who shares them with him, told me Reste was still in Worcestershire; he had not heard from him for some time, and supposed he might be returning any day now. Where in the world can he be hiding himself? Had he come to London, as you suppose, Mr. Barbary, he would have sought me out the first thing.”
Whiter than any ghost ever seen or heard of, had grown Katrine as she listened. I could not take my eyes from her terrified face.
“I do not comprehend it,” resumed Captain Amphlett, looking more helpless than a rudderless ship at sea. “Are you sure, sir, that there is no mistake; that he was really going to London?”
“Not at all sure; only that he said it,” returned Mr. Barbary in a half mocking tone. “One does not inquire too closely, you know, into the private affairs of young men. We have not heard from him yet.”
“I cannot understand it at all,” persisted Captain Amphlett; “or why he has not written to me; or where he can have got to. He ought to have written.”
“Ah, yes, no doubt,” suavely remarked Mr. Barbary. “He was careless about letter-writing, I fancy. Can I offer you any refreshment?”
“None at all, thank you; I have no time to spare,” said the other, rising to depart. “I suppose you do not chance to know whether Reste had a letter from me last Tuesday week?”