Peggy followed him mournfully. Still, shaking her head, she went in after him with suspicion, and looked round the bare walls of his old room. “I’m bound to say I can see nowght to look for here,” said Peggy, sharply; but, after another inspection, she went reluctantly up to her watch-tower—the store-room—to look for her master’s approach. Whenever she was gone, Horace stole noiselessly as a ghost into his father’s apartment. It was not a murderous light that shone from the May skies into that room, the most comfortable in the house—but the young felon had night and darkness in his face. The box stood on the dressing-table, beside that chair of Mr. Scarsdale’s, in which some malicious ghost might have sat, it looked so occupied and observant. With a trembling yet rapid hand, Horace opened the box, and took out of it the little phial which he had seen his father use. It was carefully closed, with a piece of pink leather tied over the cork, and a very peculiar knot, which Horace, with his excited fingers, found great difficulty in opening. When he had succeeded, he poured out its contents, and replaced them from another of his own sealed packets. He did this mechanically and methodically, but with the cold dew bursting on his face, and his fingers, in their haste and tremble, fumbling over the knot, which he did not seem able to tie as it was before. When he had replaced it, and closed the box, he stood, trembling and miserable, looking at it. He could not tell whether he had placed the phial exactly as it was before: the box now would not close perfectly, and he could not remember, with his scared and desperate wits, whether it had been so when he opened it. At last, impatient, he put down the lid violently, with a jar which startled him into a fever of apprehension. Somebody must have heard it!—it went through his own head and heart with a thrill of terror. Then he skulked out, with that stealthy horror in his face which should henceforward be the prevailing sentiment of Horace Scarsdale’s unhappy countenance. Twice a parricide!—without calling Peggy from her watch, or daring to look in her face, he stole out the back-way from his father’s house, leaving Death and Murder there!

A week after, Mr. Pouncet’s confidential clerk returned to Kenlisle. He was restless, and deadly pale, and went to his desk to look for letters with a horrible anxiety. There were no letters there; and he turned out again with a breathless flutter of excitement to see his principal, and speak as he best could about business. But neither Mr. Pouncet nor any other person had heard anything from Marchmain, and Horace went out again in a miserable fever, which all his efforts could not quite conceal. He had laid the train; but heaven knows how long it might smoulder before the spark was set to that thread of death!

CHAPTER XV.

WHILE these dark elements of tragedy were gathering about the lonely house of Marchmain, things went on very cheerfully in Milnehill, where everybody was vaguely encouraged by the idea of the investigation going on which might restore some wreck of fortune to the young Rifleman; and where a still more engrossing pursuit reconciled that hero himself to the necessity of waiting for news of this possible enrichment. Roger, who had no great hopes on the subject, bore the suspense with the greatest patience, and never, indeed, showed the least signs of anxiety, except when it seemed likely that a word or two of lamentation over his fate would call forth the compassion of the ladies—which compassion was very sincere on Susan’s part, and good-humouredly satirical on that of Mrs. Melrose. “It’s easy to see the poor young man’s losing heart altogether with this waiting,” the old lady would say with much gravity; “for you see, Susan, my dear, it’s not to be expected that he can find anything here to amuse him, poor man, seeing nothing but two old people and a quiet little girl like you.” Mrs. Melrose had quite taken up her abode at Milnehill since Roger’s arrival. She said it was good for her health to smell the chestnut blossoms, and overlook Uncle Edward’s gardening—and a very cheerful and lively addition she made to the happy house.

One morning, however, the quiet progress of affairs was interrupted by a letter, which Roger read not without a little agitation at the breakfast-table. When he had come to the end he handed it over suddenly, with a slight impetuous impulse, to the Colonel, who took it with his usual kind look of serious attention, put on his spectacles immediately, and addressed himself to the perusal of the letter with much gravity and earnestness. It was from Roger’s mother, and written partly under the inspiration of little Edmund, messages from whom were mixed with everything the timid woman said—

“MY DEAREST BOY—Your dear letter and the news of your arrival brought the greatest pleasure I have known for many a long day, though it came in the midst of great trouble, my dear Mr. Stenhouse having been buried just a few days before; a very great affliction, which I trust, for all your sakes, my dear boy, yours and little Edmund’s, and your dear sisters’, I shall have strength to bear. Little Edmund interrupts me to say—and I must give you the very words of his message, or he will not be pleased—that, please, you’re to come home directly, and that his papa has left him a great deal of money, and he means to give you half of it, and wants so very, very much to see his brother Roger. My own boy, I must ask you to be very good to dear little Edmund; he has been such an invalid, the dear child, that everybody has always yielded to him all his life, and he does love you so! Since ever he could speak he has kept on entreating me to tell him of his brother Roger, and he thinks there is not such another in the world; and he is very good, the dear little fellow, when he is not in pain, and one takes a little care and knows his way. However, I have something to tell you besides. The day before yesterday along with your letter there came a letter to my dear Mr. Stenhouse, which Edmund opened before I saw what he was doing. Edmund tells me to say that he does so hope you will come soon to see the cricketing in Leasough Park; and he thinks if you would join the Leasough eleven—Leasough is a village two miles off, where we always go for our drive, and where everybody knows Edmund—they would be sure to win. But about Mr. Pouncet’s letter, my dear son. It seemed written in a great fright, saying that Sir John Armitage had written to him something about you, and what should he do?—and speaking in a very improper manner, actually cursing the day he did something, which it seems my dear Mr. Stenhouse must have known of, and asking that young Mr. Scarsdale, Colonel Sutherland’s nephew, who seemed to know about it too, might be sent to Kenlisle at once. Edmund said, ‘Mamma, send for Mr. Scarsdale directly’ (he is so clever, the dear child), and so I did. But I must first go back to tell you that my dear Mr. Stenhouse himself had sent for young Mr. Scarsdale, and spoke with him in private, and charged him, as I heard with my own ears—dear Julius being taken very bad, and not knowing what he said—that ‘the boy was not to know’—just the day before his death. When Mr. Scarsdale came, I am sorry to say he was not so polite as I should have expected from Colonel Sutherland’s nephew, and would not tell either Edmund or me anything, but rather sneered at my poor child, and went off all in haste, keeping the letter in his hand. I should have sent it to you if he had not taken it away. Now, I do not know what this may mean—nor can it be expected that Edmund should, as he is only a child; but both he and I, my dear boy, beg of you to ask the Colonel what he thinks, and to try to find out yourself. And whatever you do, dear, don’t trust to that Mr. Pouncet; for it was quite clear to me by his letter that he had somehow done you wrong, and wanted to conceal it. Edmund says, ‘Tell Roger, mamma, he’s not to trust Scarsdale either;’ but indeed I scarcely have the heart to say so, remembering that he’s the dear good Colonel’s nephew—only he was not so kind as he might have been, you know, and I have some reason to think he is fond of Amelia—which should surely keep him from doing anything that would harm her brother.

“But, my dearest boy, come home. I have not seen you—my son—my baby—my first-born!—for so many years, and my heart yearns for a sight of you. Oh, come to me! Let me see you under my own roof! Roger—my son—my dear boy—come home to your mother! There is no other friend who can have so close a claim upon my darling child!

“Always your loving mother,
“A. Stenhouse.”

“You will go at once?” said the Colonel, with some gravity, as he gave the letter back into Roger’s hand.

Go at once! The words rung upon Susan’s ear like a cannon-shot. She turned her blue eyes with a look of amazed alarm from her uncle to Roger; then she became suddenly very much busied with the duties of the breakfast table, swallowing down, as a very attentive observer might have noticed, something in her throat, and carefully keeping her eyes upon her tea-pot and coffee-pot. Roger had made no answer as yet. While the Colonel inclined his ear attentively across the table for the young man’s reply, Roger was studying Susan’s face; and it is not hard to explain that common paradox of youthful nature, which made Susan’s silent signs of sudden disappointment and vexation the most exhilarating sight in the world to the young Rifleman. While Uncle Edward listened, and heard nothing, and fancied his own deaf ear in fault, Roger, quite otherwise occupied—thinking, it is to be feared, not much about his mother, and nothing at all about Mr. Pouncet—concentrated all his faculties on the honest face of Susan, with its womanly but unconcealable dismay.