“Ah, I shall have to refresh your memory, my boy. You remember, of course, about the blood?”
“No, sir.”
“What’s that on the floor?”
I looked down at the place to which he pointed with the bent poker, and there were some dark stains where I had fallen. Then, raising my eyes to his again, I looked at him imploringly.
“I shall soon refresh your memory, Antony,” he said, laughing silently, and looking at me so that I shivered again. “You will find, on sitting down and thinking a little, that you recollect perfectly well how Mr Wooster beat me cruelly with the poker, till it was bent like this, and left me bleeding terribly on the office floor. There, hold your tongue. You’ll recollect it all. Sit down and try and remember it, there’s a good boy. I’m better now, but I can’t talk much. Let me see, Antony, what time do you go to bed?”
“Nine o’clock, sir,” I faltered.
“Exactly. Well, don’t go to sleep, my boy. I’ll come up to you after you are in bed, and see if you remember it any better. Go back to your desk.”
I crept back, watching him the while, as he stood balancing the poker in his hand, and smiling at me in a way that made my blood turn cold. Then, throwing the poker back with a crash into the grate, he went out as silently as he had come, and I sat there thinking for quite two hours.
At the end of that time, I took a sheet of paper, and wrote upon it as well as my wet trembling hands would let me—
“My dear Mary,—
“Please don’t think me a very ungrateful boy, but I cannot, and I dare not, stay here any longer. When you read this I shall be gone, never to come back any more. Please tell Miss Hetty I shall never forget her kindness, and I shall never forget yours.
“I remain, your affectionate friend,—
“Antony Grace.
“P.S.—Some day, perhaps, we shall meet somewhere. I am very unhappy, and I cannot write any more. Mr Blakeford frightens me.”