CHAPTER XVI.
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.