“I’m sure, sir, I don’t know. All I can tell is, that he’s sure not to be anywhere in Liverpool; for he told me the morning he left me that he was going to leave the town, and should not come back again.”
“I’m grieved to hear it,” said the baronet. “And can you give us a clue, Mrs Jones, to our dear misguided child’s present place of abode? Can you suggest no way of finding it out?”
“I fear not, sir; Mr Oldfield has left nothing behind him except his Bible and Prayer-book, which he asked me to accept as a token of his kind feeling and regard, he was good enough to say.”
“His Bible and Prayer-book! Oh, let me look at them,” exclaimed Lady Oldfield.
Mrs Jones brought them. The Prayer-book was one given him on his twelfth birthday by his mother. His name in it was in her own handwriting. The Bible was a much newer book, and bore but few marks of use. It was a gift from Mary Oliphant. The handwriting of his name was hers, as was also that of two texts below the name, which were written out in full—
“Be thou faithful unto death, and I will give thee a crown of life.”
“There hath no temptation taken you but such as is common to man; but God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able, but will, with the temptation, also make a way to escape, that ye may be able to bear it.”
Lady Oldfield gazed at these books and the writing in them for a long time without uttering a word, and without shedding a tear. It seemed as though the sight had for the moment chained every other feeling, and left her only the power to stare wildly at the two familiar handwritings.
“And he has parted with these,” she said at last, half out loud; “he has given them away. Oh, merciful Father in heaven, what has become of my unhappy boy?”
“Calm yourself, my dear,” said Sir Thomas; “let us hope that things may be better than our fears.”