“Rather not. I’m going to pray for him once a day, Freddy.”
“All serene—so shall I.”
Jeffreys stole one hurried glance through the cracked timbers, and then walked away quickly and with a heart brim full.
Whenever in after days his soul needed music, he had only to call up the voices of those two little fellows in the shed as he last heard them. Little heeded they what came of their childish words. Little heeded they that they were helping to make a true man of the Jeff they loved, and that whatever true strength he came to possess for fighting life’s battles and bearing life’s burdens, he owed it beyond any one to them!
He walked on rapidly and steadily for two hours, until the last lingering glow of the summer light had faded from the sky, and the lights of York behind him were lost in the night. A field of new-mown hay provided him with the most luxurious bedroom man could desire.
The thought uppermost in his mind when he awoke next morning was young Forrester. He felt that it would be useless for him to attempt anything or hope for anything till he had ascertained whatever was to be known respecting the boy’s fate. Trimble’s words, which rang in his ears, had a less positive sound about them. At least he would find out for himself whether they were true or false.
Grangerham, the small country town in which he had ascertained Forrester lived, and to which he had been removed from Bolsover, was far enough away from York. Jeffreys had many a time sought it out on the map, and speculated on how it was to be reached, should a summons arrive to call him thither. It was seventy miles away as the crow flies. Jeffreys had the way there by heart. He knew what time the trains left York, what were the junctions along the line, and how far the nearest railway station would take him to his journey’s end.
Now, however, it was a question of walking, not riding. The two pounds in his pocket, all he possessed, scarcely seemed his at all as long as Mr Frampton’s school bill was unsettled. At any rate, it was too precious to squander in railway fares for a man who could walk for nothing.
It was a long, harassing journey, over moors and along stony roads. It was not till the evening of the second day that the footsore traveller read on a sign-post the welcome words, “Four miles to Grangerham.” He had eaten little and rested little on the way, and during the last twelve hours a broiling sun had beaten down pitilessly upon him.
If the journey of the two last days had been exhausting, the fruitless search of the day that followed was fully as wearisome. Grangerham was a pretty big manufacturing town, and Jeffreys’ heart sank within him as soon as he entered it. For who among these busy crowds would be likely to know anything of an invalid old lady and her cripple grandson?