“My poor Harry, I shall never see you again!”
Albert Seyton’s father had been a gentleman of considerable property, but he had lost all by his adherence to the royal family, who, now at the end, as they thought, of a civil war, were seated on the throne of England. In vain he had sought compensation. A scanty pension just sufficient to keep him and his only boy Albert from actual want, was all he could wring from the government, and now, day after day, he haunted the court with the hope of calling attention at some fortunate moment to his just claims.
He was out when all this conversation took place in the house, where circumstances had compelled him to take up his humble home.
While Albert was still suffering from the first real gush of heartfelt sorrow which had dimmed the brightness of his early youth, his father returned home, and seeing his son in tears, was at once alarmed and afflicted, nor could he be convinced that something had not happened until Albert had related to him the history of the oaken chest and what it had contained. This, coupled with the sudden and mysterious disappearance of Jacob Gray, led Mr. Seyton to think that there was a great deal more in the matter than met the eye.
Moreover, he had another reason which he did not disclose to Albert, but which the reader will know in its right place, for suspecting that a great mystery was connected in some way with Jacob Gray and his young nephew. Full of these thoughts, Mr. Seyton debated with himself whether it was his duty to inform Sir Francis Hartleton of all the circumstances; but then when he came to consider how bald and disjointed a narrative he had to tell, and how he must terminate it by saying that he had no clue whatever to the whereabouts of the parties who he suspected of he knew not what, he gave up, the idea as premature, and turning to his son, he said,—
“Albert, did young Harry Gray ever confide to you any particulars of his early life?”
“Never, father,” said Albert. “He always told me he was the child of mystery, and that his life was a romance. Then he would sigh and weep, and hope that the day would come when he could confide all to me. So, sir, I could not press him.”
“Press him!—certainly not. To have wormed his secret from him unwillingly would have been unjustifiable in the extreme. In truth, he was a gentle boy.”
“Oh, father, I loved him, dearly loved him.”
Mr. Seyton was silent for some moments, then beckoning his son to him, he whispered a few words in his ear, which brought the eloquent blood in a full rush to the cheeks of Albert, and he gasped rather than said, “Indeed, no father; I—I—never thought—”