"Why, master dear, you surely have heard the news! You have been Sir Grey since the week after Christmas."
"You mean—my father—nay, Jock—how can I speak the words?"
"He died two days after Christmas, Sir Grey. He had me with him to the last. He never trusted that knave of a kinsman, not he, though he had let himself get fast into his clutches. Ah, if you had but been with us then! Woe is me! for we wanted you sorely. It was hard upon All Saints' Day that the old master came back. He was sick; he had lost the use of his limbs. The leeches said they could do naught for him, but that he might live to be an old man yet. He made light of it at first. He vowed he would cheat them all. But we all saw death in his face. In two months he lay over yonder by the side of our sweet lady."
Jock, though no great speaker at ordinary times, had made, for him, a long speech, because the young master said not a word, but stood leaning against the angle of the wall as though overcome by the news he had heard.
"And why was I not sent for?" The words were a whisper.
"You were, Sir Grey, you were—leastways the master told me so. He said that Mr. Barty had written many letters, and sent them after you by trusty messengers. But Lord, if 'twere only what that rogue said, belike the trusty messenger was nothing better than the fire, into which he dropped his own letters after satisfying the master by writing them."
"What mean you, Jock?" asked Grey, with dry lips. "And who is this Mr. Barty of whom you speak?"
"Faith, none other but him as hopes one day to style himself Sir Bartholomew Dumaresq—your father's cousin, Sir Grey, and next of kin after you. 'Tis he as has got his grip so fast upon Hartsbourne that it'll be a tough bit of work to shake it off. He's got mortgages on the place, the old master told me at the last, and he's been squeezing it like a sponge these many years—cutting the timber, grinding the tenants, living like a miser in one corner of the house, letting all else go to wrack and ruin, that there may be nothing for the heir to come into. Oh, the master saw through him at the last, that he did; but 'twas too late then. Here he is, stuck fast like a leech to the old place, and sucking its life-blood dry, and protected by the law, so that even you can't touch him; the master told me that before he died. He'd got him to sign papers when he was merry with wine, and knew not nor cared what he signed. So long as Mr. Barty supplied him with money, he cared for naught else; and now he's got such a grip on house and lands that it'll be a matter of years before ever he can be got out, if ever that day come at all."
A numb feeling began to creep over Grey. He felt like one walking in a bad dream. The blow of hearing of his father's death was a heavy one. It seemed to shake the foundations of his life to their very base. And now his home was lost to him! Little as he understood the machinations of his kinsman, he grasped that he had come into nothing but a barren title and nominal possession of a ruinous and dilapidated old house, the revenues of which were in some way alienated to another. He had heard such tales before. He did not discredit old Jock's recital. It fitted in only too well with what he knew of his father's recklessness and selfish expenditure, and his kinsman's artful grasping policy. So, after all, he had come to a home that was not his; and he would have to face the world again as something very like a beggar.
Old Jock's hand upon his arm aroused him to a sense of outward things. Dicon had come up, and was listening with wide eyes and falling jaw to the recital of the same story as had been told in outline to Grey. The fuller details only made it sound more true and lifelike.