The chemist looked carefully at his visitor. Was he a lunatic who was labouring under some strong delusion, or had he good reason for imagining that those blank pages really contained hidden writing? It struck him as a strange time for such a visit, and that made him inclined to be suspicious of the sanity of the man before him. But the Captain's calm, quiet manner impressed him favourably, and when he presently took Mr. Lofthouse into his confidence, by telling him that a relative of his who had lately died had informed him on his death-bed that this paper contained information which it was important for him to receive, he became at once interested and at the same time eager and ready to help.
He inquired whether Captain Fortescue would be willing to entrust the paper to his care, that he might be able to experiment upon it; but when he found that Kenneth did not like the idea of doing so, inasmuch as the information which he supposed the foolscap sheet to contain was of a private nature and intended only for his own perusal, Mr. Lofthouse at once dismissed his assistants, locked the shop door, took his visitor into the laboratory, and proceeded to try the effect of various chemicals upon the paper which he had brought.
For more than an hour the two men worked away on the mysterious pages, but at the end of that time the old chemist declared his firm conviction that the captain was in some way mistaken, for that nothing whatever had been written upon the sheet of foolscap. He could find no evidence of the paper having been chemically treated, and he felt sure that, in some way or other, that paper had been placed in the envelope in the place of the paper which Captain Fortescue had expected to find there.
It was late at night when Kenneth returned home; he was more tired than he realized, until he found himself in his own room, and he slept soundly for the first time since his arrival in Sheffield.
Then followed the long quiet Sunday, during which he sat in the darkened library, and thought of the changes that week had brought into his life, and of the uncertain and difficult future that lay ahead of him.
The funeral was fixed for Tuesday; there were no relations to summon, for he knew of none. He never in his life remembered seeing any one except his father who could claim any relationship to him, however distant. And now that only relation of his was gone, and he was left entirely alone in the world, so far as any natural tie was concerned.
Not only so, but he realized that that week he had lost all his former friends. The schoolfellows at Eton, the men he had known at Sandhurst, the friends he had made since he had entered the army, would now be parted from him by a social gulf which neither he nor they would be able to cross. He would have to sever his connection with them all; leaving the army, he would leave the link which bound him to them. He must begin life anew, and it must be, in future, the life of a man dependent upon his own exertions for his daily bread. How he was to enter upon this life, how that daily bread was to be obtained, he had no idea; what path he could cut out for himself in the hard rock of circumstances which blocked his way, he could not imagine. Nor did he know to whom to apply for advice; his friends were moving in such a totally different sphere that he did not see how they could help him. He felt utterly and entirely alone.
But, at that moment, there suddenly flashed across him four lines which he had learnt to love in brighter and happier days, but which now came back to him with fresh meaning, as they seemed to express the inmost feeling of his heart:
"I do not ask my cross to understand,
My way to see:
Better in darkness just to feel Thy hand,
And follow Thee."