"The young what?" the agent exclaimed, leaning still farther forward, and putting into the words as much surprise as possible.
"It is the young master," Gridley repeated sullenly. "And he is here in season, for I want to know what I am to do with him."
"Do you mean that he is a Patten?" Hoby muttered, staring at the lad as if he were bewitched.
"To be sure," Gridley answered, looking also at the boy.
"But your master had only one son? Those were my instructions."
"Two," said the butler. "Master Francis--"
"Who is with Duke Hamilton in Scotland, and if caught in arms in England will hang," rejoined the agent, sternly. "Well?"
"And this one."
Hoby glared at the boy as if he would eat him. To find that the estate, which he had considered free from embarrassing claims, was burdened with a child, annoyed him beyond measure. The warrants under which he acted overrode, of course, all rights and all privileges; in the eye of the law the boy before him had no more to do with the old house and the wide acres than the meanest peasant who had a hovel on the land. But the agent was a humane man, and in his way a just one; and though he had been well content to ignore the malignant young reprobate whom he had hitherto considered the only claimant, he was vexed to find there was another, more innocent and more helpless.
"He must have relations," he said at last, after rubbing his closely cropped head with an air of much perplexity. "He must go to them."