CHAPTER III

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TIDINGS OF HOME.

It was late when Mr. Lowther came home from his friend the magistrate’s. The faint flush that lighted up his face, and the unwonted lustre of his eyes, bore testimony to the merits of Mr. Corbett’s tawny port. All Sandemann’s choicest vintages would not have tempted Harcourt Lowther to sit listening to a prosy old magistrate’s civil-service experiences, in Europe; but on this side of the world a bottle of good wine and a tolerably civilised companion were not entirely to be despised. The ensign was in a very good temper when he came into the little parlour, where a swinging lamp burned brightly, and where a tobacco-jar, a meerschaum, a case-bottle of Schiedam, a tumbler, and a jug of water, were set upon the table ready for the master of the domain. Mr. Lowther was in excellent temper, and inclined to be especially civil to his valet.

“No Schiedam to-night, Tredethlyn,” he said, throwing himself into the wicker easy-chair, and stretching his feet upon a smaller chair that stood opposite to him; “I’ve had a little too much of that old fellow’s port. Devilish good stuff it is too, if it hadn’t a tendency to spoil a man’s complexion, and concentrate itself in his nose. I’ll take a pipe, though. Just give me a light, will you, Tredethlyn?”

He sat in a lazy attitude, with his head thrown back against the rail of the chair, and daintily arranged the stray shreds of tobacco in the bowl of his pipe with the delicate tip of his little finger; while the private lighted a long strip of folded paper and handed it to his master.

“Oh, by the bye,” muttered Mr. Lowther, speaking with his mouth shut upon the amber mouthpiece of his pipe, “I’ve got some news for you, Tredethlyn. Just put your hand in my coat-pocket, and take out the paper you’ll find there. Goodness knows what it means,--a legacy of fifty pounds or so, I suppose. Anyhow, you’re a lucky devil. I should be glad enough to get even such a windfall as that; but I never hear of anything to my advantage.”

Francis Tredethlyn had taken the paper from his master’s pocket by this time; it was an old copy of the “Times;” and he presented it to the ensign, but the other pushed it away impatiently.

“_I_ don’t want it,” he said; “I think I read every line of it while old Corbett was snoring after dinner. Look at the third advertisement in the second column of the Supplement.”

The soldier did as he was directed, and read the advertisement aloud very slowly and in a tone of unmitigated wonder.

“Francis Tredethlyn, nephew of the late Oliver Tredethlyn, of Tredethlyn Grange, near Landresdale, Cornwall. If the above-mentioned will apply to Messrs. Krusdale and Scardon, solicitors, 29, Verulam Buildings, Gray’s Inn, he will hear of something to his advantage.”

“The late Oliver Tredethlyn!” cried Francis, staring blankly at the paper; “my uncle’s dead, then!”

“Was he alive when you left England?” asked the ensign.

“He was alive when I left Cornwall. Dead! my uncle Oliver?” the young man said, in a dreamy voice; “and I pictured him to-night in my fancy, plodding home from the outlying lands, as hale and stern and sturdy as ever. Dead! and he may have been dead ever so long, for all this tells me,” added Francis Tredethlyn, pointing to the advertisement.

“You were uncommonly fond of your uncle, I suppose, from the way you talk of him,” Mr. Lowther remarked, carelessly. He was in good humour to-night, and ready to talk about anything,--inclined to take almost an interest in the affairs of another man, and that man his valet!

“Fond of him!” exclaimed Francis Tredethlyn, “fond of my uncle Oliver! I don’t think the creature ever lived that was fond of him, or whose love he’d have cared to have. He liked folks to obey him, and cut things as close as he wanted ’em cut; but beyond that, he didn’t care what they thought or what they did. I suppose he did love his daughter though, after a fashion, but it was a very hard fashion. No, sir, I wasn’t

## particularly fond of my uncle Oliver Tredethlyn, but I’m struck all of a

heap by the news of his death coming upon me so sudden; and I’m thinking of the effect that it will have on my cousin Susy,--she’s all alone in the world now,--poor little Susy!”

The ensign looked up quickly. “Susy!” he said, “who the deuce is your cousin Susy?”

“She’s my uncle Oliver’s only daughter, sir; his only child, too, for the matter of that. We were engaged to be married, sir; but things went wrong with me at home, and I ran away and enlisted.”

“Ah! How long ago did all that happen?”

“Nearly five years, sir.”

“And you’ve kept up some sort of a correspondence with your cousin since then, I suppose?”

“Not I, sir; her father wasn’t the man to let her write a letter that would cost a lump of money for postage, or to write any letter to such a scamp as me, either; and poor Susy was too close watched, and too obedient into the bargain, to write without his leave. _I’ve_ written to her now and then, but I’ve had no news from home since the day I left it, except this that you’ve brought me to-night.”

“And I suppose your uncle has left you a legacy?”

“I suppose so, sir; it isn’t likely to be much anyhow, for I never was any great favourite of his.”

“You’d better write to these lawyers, though. There’s a mail to-morrow; bring out your desk, and write at once.”

“Here, sir?”

“Yes, here.”

Francis Tredethlyn hesitated for a moment, but seeing that his master was resolute, he brought a clumsy old-fashioned mahogany desk from his chamber at the back of the cottage, and seated himself at a corner of the table with the desk before him. He had placed himself at a very respectful distance from Mr. Harcourt Lowther; but that gentleman, having finished his pipe, got up, and began to walk slowly up and down the room, while his valet squared his elbows and commenced a laborious inscription of his address at the top of the page.

“Tell them that you are Francis Tredethlyn, nephew of Oliver Tredethlyn, and that you can bring forward plenty of witnesses to prove your identity, and so on, as soon as you can get back to England. I don’t suppose they’ll let you have your legacy till they see you. Ask them to tell you what the amount is, at any rate.”

Mr. Lowther did not confine himself to giving his valet these hints upon the composition of his letter; he was good enough to stand behind the young man’s chair, and look over his shoulder as he wrote; but as Francis Tredethlyn’s penmanship was not of a very rapid order, the ensign’s eyes soon wandered from the page, and straying to an open division of the desk, lighted on something that looked like a water-coloured sketch, covered with silver paper.

“Why, you sly dog,” he cried with a laugh, “you’ve got a woman’s picture in your desk!”

Francis Tredethlyn blushed and looked very sheepish as he took the little water-coloured sketch out of its silver-paper envelope and handed it submissively to his master.

“It’s my cousin Susan’s portrait, sir,” he said; “it was taken by a travelling artist, who came down our way one summer. It isn’t much of a likeness, but it pleases me to look at it sometimes, for I can fill up all that’s wanting in the face out of my own mind, and see my cousin smiling at me, as if I was at home again.”

Mr. Lowther stood behind his servant’s chair looking at the portrait, while the soldier went on writing. It was not the work of a very brilliant artist; there was none of those deliciously careless touches, none of that transparent lightness, which a clever painter’s manipulation would have displayed. It was a stiff, laborious little portrait of a girl with hazel brown eyes and smooth banded brown hair, and an innocent childish mouth, rosy and fresh and smiling as a summer’s morning in the country. It was only the picture of a country girl, who seemed to have looked shyly at the artist as he painted her.

“So that’s your cousin Susy,” said Mr. Lowther, laying the picture down upon the table by Tredethlyn’s elbow. “I shan’t stop while you address your letter, and I don’t want any thing more, so you can go to bed at once if you like. Good night.”

The ensign took a candle from a little side-table as he spoke, lighted it at the lamp above Tredethlyn’s head, and went out of the room. Francis finished his letter, and placed it on the mantelpiece, where some letters of his master’s were lying ready for the next day’s mail. He did not go to bed at once, though it was late, and he was free to do so, but sat for some time with his cousin Susan Tredethlyn’s portrait in his hand, looking at the girlish face, and thinking of the changes that had come to pass in his old home.

“The old chap was hard and stern with her, and her life was a dull one, poor little girl,” thought the soldier; “and she’ll have a fine fortune, I suppose, now he’s gone; but somehow I don’t like to think of her left lonely in the world; she’s too young and too pretty, and too innocent for that. Innocent! why, bless her poor tender little heart, I don’t think she knows there’s such a thing as wickedness upon this earth.”

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