“The kindest thing you could have done, instead of letting him dangle after you indefinitely. Rough on him, perhaps; but that sort of fellow doesn’t deserve much letting down.”
The reader has heard already how in the course of her visits of mercy Raby happened to find Jonah Trimble very near his end, and how she was able to cheer and lighten his dying hours. Little dreamed she, as she sat by the death-bed that morning, and wrote those few dying words, into whose hands her little letter would fall, or what a spell they would work on the life of him who received them. From the other neighbours she heard not a little about “John,” and sometimes wished she might chance to see him. But he was away from early morning till late at night, and they never met. Mrs Pratt in the room below, and her little dying daughter, had many a tale of kindness and devotion to tell about him; and when presently the little life fled, she heard with grateful tears of his act of mercy to the poor overwrought mother, and thanked God for it.
The time passed on, and one day early in December, when she returned home, she found her father in an unwonted state of excitement.
“There’s a clue, Raby, at last!” he said.
“A clue, father—you mean about young Forrester?”
“About both. It’s the most mixed-up affair I was ever in. Who do you suppose has written in answer to our advertisement about Forrester?”
“Has he replied himself?” asked Raby disingenuously; for she guessed the truth.
“Not a bit of it. The letter’s from Jeffreys. He doesn’t sign his name, of course; but he writes to say that he was at Bolsover, and was responsible for the accident, and repeats what Rimbolt knows already about his trying to hear of them in his native place. There’s nothing very fresh about Forrester; but it may lead to our finding Jeffreys.”
“Of course,” said Raby, finding it hard to conceal her emotion, “he has written to the lawyers. Does he give an address, then?”
“No—only a coffee-house in Drury Lane. He’s evidently on his guard against a trap. He writes private and confidential; but you can see he is ready to do anything to find Forrester.”