"Good gracious!" exclaimed Alec, a sudden light bursting upon him. "Then you are old Peter Crosby's nephew!"
"Yes. I used to live with him. He adopted me when I was a lad, but he has turned me out since then; he said he couldn't afford to keep me any longer; I ate too much."
"Miserly old brute! Why he is as rich as Crœsus."
"He was quite right, poor old chap," said Crosby, with that tenderness which the very strong and healthy often have for the old and weak. "I have been an awful fool, and haven't lived as decently as I might. He is old now, and couldn't bear to see me squandering my money, although it was my own; he thought I should be asking him for more when mine was all gone. So he turned me out before that time came. He was very good to me when I was a little un."
Whilst Alec was talking with Crosby, Como, having made a little tour of inspection round the house on his own account, came into the room, and seeing food on the table and no one very near it he thought he could not do better than help himself. This he could easily do, as he stood so high that his head was above the level of the table. Having demolished the food, that in his excitement Alec had hardly touched, the dog approached his master, looking, but for a crumb on the side of his mouth, the picture of canine innocence. With a sideway wriggle of his hind quarters, and with a preliminary wave—it was too stately a movement to be called a wag—of his tail, he laid his head on Alec's knee.
Alec always respected dogs' feelings—which are much more acute than most people think—so he noticed the dog, and, without interrupting his talk with Crosby, he caressed Como's tawny head and ears. He was listening to his companion, yet all the time there was a mental picture before him of Como's master lying unburied by that charred black stump, and exposed to the garish sunlight. He could not forget his loss, it was too recent, and the pain of it too keen; the events of the last night seemed burned into his mind in a series of indelible pictures. Suddenly an idea flashed into his mind, and leaping up from his seat, he exclaimed—
"Can you get me a bit of paper and ink or pencil?"
"Whatever for?" asked Crosby, surprised by Alec's abrupt movement, and by the earnestness of his face and voice.
"Como will take a message."
"And who in the name of fate is Como?"