She waited patiently for a couple of minutes—and then the clerk came back, with traces of excitement in his manner.
"Yes—Mr. Bulteel will see you. This way!"
She followed him with her usual quiet step and composed demeanour, and bent her head with a pretty air of respect as she found herself in the presence of an elderly man with iron-grey whiskers and a severely preoccupied air of business hardening his otherwise rather benevolent features. He adjusted his spectacles and looked keenly at her as she entered. She spoke at once.
"You are Mr. Bulteel?"
"Yes."
"Then this is for you," she said, approaching him, and handing him the packet she had brought. "They are some papers belonging to a poor old tramp named David, who lodged in my house for nearly a year—it will be a year come July. He was very weak and feeble and got lost in a storm on the hills above Weircombe—that's where I live—and I found him lying quite unconscious in the wet and cold, and took him home and nursed him. He got better and stayed on with me, making baskets for a living—he was too feeble to tramp any more—but he gave me no trouble, he was such a kind, good old man. I was very fond of him. And—and—last week he died"—here her sweet voice trembled. "He suffered great pain—but at the end he passed away quite peacefully—in my arms. He was very anxious that I should bring his papers to you myself—and I promised I would so——"
She paused, a little troubled by his silence. Surely he looked very strangely at her.
"I am sorry," she faltered, nervously—"if I have brought you any bad news;—poor David seemed to have no friends, but perhaps you were a friend to him once and may have a kind recollection of him——"
He was still quite silent. Slowly he broke the seals of the packet, and drawing out a slip of paper which came first to his hand, read what was written upon it. Then he rose from his chair.
"Kindly wait one moment," he said. "These—these papers and letters are not for me, but—but for—for another gentleman."