'Who is it?' he inquired, looking up from his book. 'How often am I to tell you to ask people's names before you tell them I am at home? Go back and find out.'
I returned to the verandah, and asked the stranger if he would be kind enough to tell me his name.
'Redgarth,' he said, 'Michael Redgarth. Tell your father that, and I think he will remember me.'
I returned to the dining-room and acquainted my father with what I had discovered. Prepared as I was for it to have some effect upon him, I had no idea the shock would be so great. My father sprang to his feet with what sounded almost like a cry of alarm.
'Redgarth here,' he said; 'what on earth can it mean? However, I'll soon find out.'
So saying he pushed me on one side and went quickly down the passage in the direction of the verandah. My curiosity by this time was thoroughly excited, and I followed him at a respectful distance, frightened lest he should see me and order me back, but resolved that, happen what might, I would discover his mysterious errand.
I saw my father pass through the door out on to the verandah, and as he did so I heard the stranger rise from his chair. What he said by way of introduction I could not catch, but whatever it may have been there could be no doubt that it incensed my father beyond all measure.
'Call me that at your peril,' I heard him say. 'Now tell me your errand here as quickly as you can and be gone again.'
As I stood, listening, in the shadow of the doorway, I could not help thinking that this was rather scurvy treatment on my father's part of one who had come so many thousand miles to see him. However, Mr Redgarth did not seem as much put out by it as I expected he would be.
'I have come to tell you, my—' he began, and then checked himself, 'well, since you wish it, I will call you Mr Heggarstone, that your father is dead.'