“Then back comes Wyn, and hears the story, and begins to cry, and bursts out about the letter that Mr Alwyn had given him and the master took.”
“And is Mr Alwyn at the house now?” asked Harry.
“Yes,” said Warren, “he is. But now, perhaps, you’ll tell us where you come from, and what’s brought you here, and why in the wood?”
“That last,” said Harry, “came about unfortunate. Mr Alwyn and I came down here straight from London, knowing nothing of any one. And, thinking I was least likely to be recognised, he sent me with the letter to his brother, asking him to meet him in the wood, or come to London to see him, and to tell him how the land lay before he made himself known to his father. I gave the letter to Wyn, who dropped it: here it is. Mr Alwyn met Mr Edgar by chance, and was so knocked down by the state in which he found him, that he couldn’t tell what to do next. He was afraid, you see, of his brother having to bear the brunt of a discovery, and he not there. That made him delay.”
“But, why hollow trees, which seem to have occurred in everybody’s story?” said Warren.
“Oh!” said Harry, “to pass the time,” repeating much of what he had told Mrs Stroud, omitting, however, Alwyn’s experiences, but showing the copies of the certificates and attestations of Lennox’s confession, giving proofs by letters and documents of his respectable position in the States, and expressing with the frankness which, while it was like his old daring, had yet a different note in it, how, being a father himself, he had repented of his hardness and neglect towards his home. “But,” he concluded, “if people don’t believe us, there’s no more to be said about it at present.”
Warren was a shrewd man; he had never thought it at all likely that Harry had stolen the jewels, and he saw plainly that there was no reason to induce him to return to his native country unless the story was true.
“I take it,” he said, “that the gentlemen before whom these affidavits were made believed in the story.”
“Why, certainly,” said Harry, “which they are prepared to say in writing. Mr Warren,” he added, standing up, “there’s a deal in the past I have to ask your pardon for. I was a young scamp that cared neither for man nor God, and I was downright ungrateful for all your kindness. But I’m clear from that theft, and if you and my father can say you think so, you’ll clear away a trouble from me which not all my good fortune has made me forget.”
“Well, Harry,” said Warren, “I see nothing against your story, and I’m prepared to help you to make it out.”