"No, no, to Fairford, —shire."
"And at Southampton, he was taken ill, Mrs. Cricklade told me."
"Yes; but the doctor said he must have been ill a long time. He seemed to me just the same until in the night (the ship had sailed for Bordeaux again, and he had been on board getting some things we had forgotten) I found him standing beside my bed. 'Get up, Ruthie,' he said, 'but don't wake the boy;' and he stooped and kissed Ollie. 'I don't feel well,' he said, and went back to his room. I got up quickly and ran to him. He was lying on the bed, his face was grey-looking and not as usual. I rang the bell, and they sent for a doctor and gave him brandy. It was all of no use. He was in such pain—pain in his heart, he said, that he could hardly breathe, and very soon we found that he could not speak. He tried so hard, and tried to write too."
"I have the paper still, but there are no plain words on it. He said, 'Fairford'; and I said; 'I am to go there with Ollie,' and he seemed content. Then he said, 'My father!' and I said I would go to him. But he began about something else; he said, 'You lock,' and I thought he meant lock the box, because he had a small box with some money in it; so I locked it, but I'm afraid that was not what he wanted done, for though the doctor was begging him to be quiet, he sat up suddenly and tried again to speak—and then—then he was dead."
Quiet tears ran down her cheeks, and the old man, all unused as he was to such offices, took her little hand in his and dried her eyes with his handkerchief.
"I must not cry," Ruth sobbed out, "or it will fret Ollie. They gave me all the money that was left after paying every one, and a servant from the hotel came part of the way with us. But I could not find my grandfather; and what I shall do I don't know."
"The first thing to do, Ruth, is to write to the firm in Bordeaux. They may be able to explain, perhaps, or there may be letters for your father lying there at this moment."
"I don't know; Monsieur Oliver is away, and old Monsieur Mordan never liked father, though he had saved his only son. He would not give him a holiday. Father had to give up his place. Another man came the day before we left."
"Still, no doubt he will tell us if he knows anything that can help us. And we will put an advertisement in the newspaper, to find your grandfather. We can write that now."
He got paper and pencil, and began to write: