He crossed the room once more in his stealthy fashion, and took from the mantelpiece a small bottle of nerve-tabloids which he had forgotten, and slipped them into his pocket, and then went out into the dark again. Once he paused at the entrance of the corridor and listened attentively, and then crept down the garden path and found the horses tethered to the paraiso trees. They led them softly through the monte, and there Dick paused.
'I am going to say good-bye to him,' he said. 'I don't care what you say!'
He went to the grave under the mimosa trees, and with a queer elfin gesture he stooped down and kissed the lately disturbed sods, and made the sign of the cross upon his narrow little chest as he had seen his Spanish mother do. The dignity of the action, with its unconscious touch of foreign grace, and the boy's pathetic attempt to keep back his tears as he lingered by the grave in the darkness at an hour when any other boy of his age would have been safely tucked up in bed, might well touch the heart of any one who stood beside the child.
'I didn't know he was hit!' said Purvis suddenly; and probably he spoke the truth for once in his life. Toffy was one of the few men who in many years had trusted him, and he had been a good friend to Dick. 'Well, the game's up!' said Purvis. And he and his son mounted their horses and rode off into the blackness of the night together.
Ross had rescued the black japanned box from the boat, and had kept it under his care until such time as he should have an opportunity of giving it to Peter. It was from a sense that it might provide some sort of distraction to a man almost dazed with grief that he brought it into the drawing-room on the evening of the day Toffy was buried, and suggested that perhaps Peter had better open it and see what was in it. The key was gone, of course, but they prised it open with some tools, and on the top of the box there was a letter which made Peter lay his hand over his pocket for a moment. It was as though by some magic the packet which lay there had been transferred to the interior of a black japanned box discovered upon a river steamer in the Argentine Republic. The writing on the cover was a duplicate of the one he himself held, and was addressed in his mother's writing: 'To my son, to be given to him at my death.'
Peter could not see quite straight for a moment. The finding of the packet seemed to establish conclusively his brother's identity; and he took out the folded sheets which lay inside the cover with hands that were not steady.
The very words in the opening sentences were the same as in his own letter, and written in the clear, strong handwriting which he knew so well.
'When you get this letter I shall be dead,' he read in the words which were already painfully familiar to him; 'and before I die there is something which I think I had better tell you. I am not haunted by remorse nor indulging in death-bed repentance, and I shall merely ask you not to hate me more than you can help when you have finished reading this letter.
'You must often have heard of your elder brother who died when I was in Spain, the year of your father's death. He did not die——' So far Peter knew the letter off by heart, but there seemed to be many pages of writing to follow. 'And as far as I am aware he may be living now.'
'If it is anything bad,' said Ross kindly, 'why not put it off until to-morrow? You are about used up to-day, Peter, and whatever there is in that box can wait.'