“He had no wife alive, and when he died did not know what had become of his only son. The boy was at school in England—Bolsover School—and met with an accident, caused, it is said, by the spite of a schoolfellow, which nearly killed him, and wholly crippled him. He was taken home to his grandmother’s, but after she died he disappeared, and poor Forrester had been unable to hear anything about him. It is a sad story. I promised Forrester when I got home I would do what I could to find the boy and take care of him. You will help, won’t you?”
Raby watched her uncle as he read the passage, and then asked,—
“I asked father to tell me something about the Forresters, uncle, because some one—it was Mr Scarfe—had told me that he believed Captain Forrester was the father of an old schoolfellow of his at Bolsover who had a bad accident.”
“Is that all he told you?” asked her uncle.
“No,” said Raby, flushing; “he told me that Mr Jeffreys had been the cause of the accident.”
“That was so,” said Mr Rimbolt. “Sit down, child, and I’ll tell you all about it.”
And her uncle told her what he had heard from Mr Frampton, and what Jeffreys had suffered in consequence; how he had struggled to atone for the past, and what hopes had been his as to the future. Raby’s face glowed more and more as she listened. It was a different soldier’s tale from what she was used to; but still it moved her pity and sympathy strangely.
“It’s a sad story, as your father says,” concluded Mr Rimbolt; “but the sadness does not all belong to young Forrester.”
Raby’s eyes sparkled.
“No, indeed,” said she; “it is like shipwreck within sight of the harbour.”