“Toome, I suppose,” remarked the major. “It’s the last station before you get to Lefford—I noticed the name last night. I am very sorry. I should liked to have seen Collinson. Tell him so, will you. I am Major Leckie.”
“You will be calling again, perhaps?”
“I can’t do that. I must spend the rest of this day with my friend, Sir Henry Westmorland, and I leave to-night. Tell Collinson that I embark in a few days. Stay: this is my address in London, if he will write to me. I wonder he did not attempt to find me out—I came home before he did: and he knew that he could always get my address at my bankers’.”
“I will tell Collinson all you say, Major Leckie,” said the stranger, glancing at the card. “It is a pity he is out.”
“Should he come back in time—though I fear, by what you say, there’s little chance of it—be so good as to say that Sir Henry Westmorland will be happy to see him to dinner this evening at Foxgrove, at six o’clock—and to come over as much earlier as he can.”
With the last words, Major Leckie left, Collinson’s friend politely attending him down to the front-door. I was standing at Mr. Tamlyn’s gate as he passed it on his way back to Foxgrove. Dr. Knox, then going off on foot to see a patient, came across the yard from the surgery at the same moment.
“Such a mischance!” the major stopped in his rapid walk to say to us. “Collinson has gone to Toome to-day. I saw a friend of his, who is staying with him, and he thinks he won’t be back before night.”
“I did not know Collinson had any one staying with him,” remarked the doctor. “Some one called in upon him, probably.”
“This man is evidently staying with him; making himself at home too,” said the major. “He was in a dressing-gown and slippers, and had his feet on the fender, smoking a pipe. A tall, dark fellow, face all hair.”
“Why, that is Collinson himself,” cried I.