_THE DISCOVERY IN THE LOFT._
Blackie followed Cyril into the house through the back door when they
entered it on their return from visiting the sleigh.
He did more; not content with his strange quarters in the kitchen he
followed his master into the larger room, and trotted round it,
looking hard at everything, including Mr. Morton in the arm-chair,
and poking his nose into the hole in the middle of the floor as if to
see why it was left there.
"I guess he's a smart pony, but you must take him right out, Cyril,"
said Cynthy.
"Oh, yes, of course. Come, Blackie." He led him into the little
kitchen, telling him repeatedly that he was to be a good pony and
stay quietly there. But Blackie whinnied a little, seeing no
prospect of food.
"Oh, poor Blackie!" cried the boy sympathisingly; "what will you do
without food?" He returned to Cynthy, who was spreading out a nice
little repast of sandwiches, bottled milk, cheese, and bread and
butter on the rough table.
"Were all these things in that basket?" asked Cyril, looking at the
one they had fetched from the sleigh.
"All except the sandwiches. Your father provided those," she replied.
"But I say, Cyril," she added, "aren't you going to feed that pony of
yours?"
"I only wish I could," he replied earnestly. "But unless you would
give me a slice of bread for him, I don't know what there is for him
to eat."
"Why, what do you imagine there is in this bag?" asked the girl,
producing a coarse canvas bag from amongst the rugs she had thrown
down in a corner.
"Oh! is it corn?"
"Corn and chopped hay," she replied. "The very thing for Blackie. I
brought it for my horses, but didn't give it to them, for they can
find their way home."
Cyril seized the bag eagerly, and with a grateful look, without
waiting to thank her, he ran to Blackie and spread its contents out
upon the floor. Then he really enjoyed seeing his pony eating the
food with relish.
"Cyril! Cyril!" called Cynthy at last. "Come and have some dinner
yourself."
All at once, feeling very hungry, Cyril returned to the other room
and joined the others at the nice impromptu meal.
After it was over, and the things were cleared away--what was left of
the food being carefully put by--Cynthy told Mr. Morton what she had
already explained to Cyril, about the late owner of the house and his
wicked successor. "He might have killed us too," she said in
conclusion, "or at any rate have been very awkward, if I had not
terrified him by pretending to be his late father. That was the only
plan I could think of to frighten him away--yes, I see you look
grave; it was trading on his fears, I know. But we really were in a
desperate case. The horses could not possibly drag the sleigh
another inch, and it was absolutely necessary we should have shelter
from the snow."
"But what did that mean about Mr. Gerald? I did not quite
understand," interposed Cyril. "Who is Mr. Gerald?"
"He is one of the best and gentlest of men," answered the girl, "so
generous that he can never keep a cent in his pocket if he thinks
anyone else has need of it. He told me once he had been extravagant
and foolish in his youth away in England, and had done harm to a few
people without really meaning it, and that made him very anxious to
do all the good he could to others."
"A beautiful way of retrieving the past!" said Mr. Morton. "Would
that everyone tried to do that sort of thing!"
"You said that exactly as Mr. Gerald might have done," exclaimed
Cynthy, looking searchingly at her patient. "You do remind me of
him."
"I believe you like Mr. Gerald a great deal," observed Cyril.
"I do indeed," said Cynthy, very earnestly.
"Can you tell us why?" asked Mr. Morton, regarding her with great
interest.
Cynthy blushed deeply. "I'm engaged to be married," she said, "to a
young man named Harry Quilter. He got into difficulties, and would
have been ruined by some men, up at Iron Mountain, if it hadn't been
for Mr. Gerald. He took his part and stuck up for him, besides
paying some money Harry owed. And afterwards he got my Harry to go
about hunting with him until he'd got all sorts of Mr. Gerald's wise
maxims and good thoughts into his head. Now Harry has set up a
store--a shop, you know, only they call them all stores here--and
he's doing well. My father says Mr. Gerald has been the making of
him."
"I am not surprised you think gratefully of him," said Mr. Morton.
"But how did such a man come to be lodging in this lonely house?"
"Well, I don't know exactly, but I think he took compassion on old
Jabez, who always posed as a very poor, half-starved old man, and
thought it would be kind to lodge with him and pay him well for it
when he hunted in this neighbourhood. He was always doing kind
things like that. Pete, the old man's son, was a hunter too, and
perhaps he helped to persuade Mr. Gerald to lodge here, telling him
it was a good centre from which to hunt deer in the forest round. He
used to go out hunting with Mr. Gerald. Perhaps he thought even then
that if he killed the old man whilst Mr. Gerald was with them he
might swear the latter did it. He's that cunning, is Pete."
"How was the old man killed?"
"No one knows rightly. Pete declared that Mr. Gerald had knocked him
down with the butt end of his gun and thrown him into the river--the
body was never recovered."
"But how was it such a man as Pete could be believed before this Mr.
Gerald?"
"Well, you see the folks about here had known Pete from a child; he
had grown up amongst them, and they never thought he could do it.
Then the trappers and hunters and such-like all hang together, and
what one man says the others always hold by. Besides, Mr. Gerald was
an Englishman--and some of the people here are rather set against the
English just now--and he had made himself a bit unpopular by taking
the cause of the weak and despised against the richer, stronger men,
and these last couldn't make out what he did it for. 'We shall see
through his little game one day,' they said. So when Pete said Mr.
Gerald had killed his father and taken all his money--a very
considerable amount--they believed him. But there weren't any police
here, and there was some delay, during which Mr. Gerald got away! It
was a pity he did that. But he never cared much for people's
opinion, and he may have thought he would rather go away than fight
the matter out." But Cynthy sighed. "It always makes a man look
guilty," she added, "when he runs away. However, Cyril, you've heard
as well as I Pete's confession, that he committed the crime himself."
"Yes, he said so! What a fright he was in!" cried the boy. "I never
saw anyone so much afraid in my life!"
"A guilty conscience is a terrible thing," remarked Mr. Morton.
"But, Cynthy," he added to the American girl, "it is rather a
coincidence that the reason we came to North America was to find a
brother of mine, who went there many years ago, named Gerald Morton."
"What was he like?" asked the girl at once, for she had been greatly
struck by Mr. Morton's resemblance to her hero. "Tell me just what
he was like."
"He was five feet ten inches in height," said Mr. Morton. "His hair
a blend between gold and red, his eyes were blue, and he used to look
very young and boyish."
Cynthy nodded. "Mr. Gerald was all that you have said, except the
last," she remarked. "He looked anything but boyish, but then he had
had a hard struggle to get on. You know this country is not so easy
for gentlemen without money to get on in. Poor men do better,
because they have strength with which to labour, and they often know
a trade. Mr. Gerald had knocked about a great deal, I know, before
he settled down as a hunter."
"I wonder if he can possibly be my brother," said Mr. Morton. "I
should like to see the room he occupied when he was here. There
might be some traces of him in it."
"Oh, it is the bedroom he had. Up that ladder it will be," said
Cynthy. "No, sir, please sit still. I can't let you try to get up
with that foot. Cyril can go up with me, and we will look round and
see if Mr. Gerald has left anything."
Cyril had already jumped up and run to the wooden ladder leading up
to a trap-door in the boarded ceiling. He climbed up before Cynthy,
and pushing open the trap-door, entered the loft-like bedroom.
Cynthy followed him in, and they looked round. A bed on the floor, a
three-legged stool, a table of very amateurish construction, and some
torn papers in a heap behind the door seemed to be all.
"What a poor place!" cried Cyril. "Oh, I don't think my Uncle Gerald
can have lived here!"
"Let us look at these papers," said Cynthy, kneeling down beside the
heap on the floor. "I'd scorn to look at any man's torn letters,"
she said; "but if there should be Mr. Gerald's real name on these,
and it should lead to his friends finding him, why it would be such a
good thing! These, however, are mostly torn memoranda and receipted
bills. See, there is my father's name on one. He keeps a big store
at Monkton, six miles off. But what's this?" She held up an
envelope with the words written upon it, "Cyril Morton, Esq.," and
the name Brooklands below, and on the next line the letter T and a
blot, as if the address had never been completed."
"Why, that is papa's address!" exclaimed Cyril. "Do you see the
writer was just beginning to write Truro when he stopped? The next
word would have been Cornwall, and then it would have been finished.
And my father will know the writing."
"That he will. We'll take all these papers to him," said Cynthy,
gathering them up.