Lost in the backwoods

by E. C. Kenyon

"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."