“I knew a General Harding, of Beechwood Park, not a great way from Windsor. I had only a slight acquaintance with him. He died about the time you say. Would he be the man you mean?”
“By Jove! the very same. Beechwood! That I think is the name; but we shall soon see. It’s very odd,” continued my friend, rising from his seat, and going towards a secretary that stood in a corner of the room. “Very odd, indeed. I have been myself half in the mind of riding over to the estancia, where you have been so well entertained. I should have done so this very day, but that I was waiting for you. I may as well tell you what would have been my errand. I know very little of my English neighbour, Mr Harding. His intercourse is mostly among Italians and Argentines; so that we English don’t see much of him. He’s said to be a first-rate fellow, for all that.”
“I’m glad to hear him so spoken of. It’s just the impression he has made upon me. But what has this to do with your inquiries about General Harding?”
I need hardly say that, by this time, my own curiosity was aroused—so much so, that I had once more taken the card out of my pocket, and was submitting it to a fresh scrutiny.
“Well,” said my friend, returning to the original subject of discourse, “while looking out for you, I could not well leave the house; and having no other way of amusing myself, I took to reading some old English newspapers. We don’t have them very new here at any time. These were dated several years ago, and one of them was a Times. Now, if you’d lived as long upon the pampas as I have, you’d not turn up your nose at a Times, however ancient its date; nor would you leave a paragraph unread, even to the advertisements. I was poring over these, when my eye fell upon one, which I leave you to read for yourself. There it is.”
I took the paper handed me by my friend, and read the advertisement he had pointed out. It ran thus:—
“Henry Harding.—If Mr Henry Harding, son of the late General Harding, of Beechwood Park, in the county of Buckingham, will apply to Messrs Lawson and Sons, solicitors, of Lincoln’s Inn Fields, he will hear of something to his advantage. Mr Harding was last heard of in Rome, at the time of the revolutionary struggle, and is supposed to have taken part in the defence of that city by Garibaldi. Any one giving information of his present address, or, if dead, stating the time and circumstances of his death, will be handsomely rewarded.”
“What do you think of it?” asked my friend, as soon as I had finished reading the advertisement.
“I remember having seen it before,” was my reply. “It was inserted in the papers repeatedly, several years ago, and at the time caused much talk. Of course, everybody knew that young Harding had gone away from home—no one knowing where. That was some time before his father’s death. There was some story afloat about his having been jilted by a girl. I knew something of the young lady myself. Also, of his having gone to Italy, and fallen into the hands of brigands, or joined the partisans of Mazzini. No one knew the truth, as General Harding was a man in the habit of keeping his family secrets to himself. It was after his death that the talk was. When these advertisements appeared, the young fellow had been a considerable time out of sight; and for that reason they attracted less attention. It was said that the father had left him a legacy, and that was why the solicitor was advertising for him.”
“Just what I thought. But do you think he ever turned up?”