“Why, Mat, old boy!” he said soothingly, “you look a little out of sorts. What’s wrong?”
Mat scoured away at the barrel of the gun harder than ever, and gave no answer.
“What, in the name of wonder, can you be scouring your rifle for to-night?” continued young Thorpe. “You have never yet touched it since you brought it into the house. What can you possibly want with it now? We don’t shoot birds in England with rifle bullets.”
“A rifle bullet will do for my game, if I put it up,” said Mat, suddenly and fiercely fixing his eyes on Zack.
“What game does he mean?” thought young Thorpe. “He’s been drinking himself pretty nearly drunk. Can anything have happened to him since we parted company at the theater?—I should like to find out; but he’s such an old savage when the brandy’s in his head, that I don’t half like to question him—”
Here Zack’s reflections were interrupted by the voice of his eccentric friend.
“Did you ever meet with a man of the name of Carr?” asked Mat. He looked away from young Thorpe, keeping his eyes steadily on the rifle, and rubbing hard at the barrel, as he put this question.
“No,” said Zack. “Not that I can remember.”
Mat left off cleaning the gun, and began to fumble awkwardly in one of his pockets. After some little time, he produced what appeared to Zack to be an inordinately long letter, written in a cramped hand, and superscribed apparently with two long lines of inscription, instead of an ordinary address. Opening this strange-looking document, Mat guided himself a little way down the lines on the first page with a very unsteady forefinger—stopped, and read somewhat anxiously and with evident difficulty—then put the letter back in his pocket, dropped his eyes once more on the gun in his lap, and said with a strong emphasis on the Christian name:—
“Arthur Carr?”