Roger Ingleton, Minor | Page 3

trouble himself about difficulties of that sort, provided only he could find the doctor in, and transport him in a reasonable time to Maxfield.
As he passed the stables, he glanced within, on the off-chance of finding a horse available. But the place was empty, and not even a stable-boy could be made to hear his summons.
So he tramped out into the road, where the snow lay a foot deep, and with long strides carved his way through it towards Yeld. Half a mile on he overtook a country cart, heavily laden and stuck fast in the snow.
"Ah! Hodder," said he to the nonplussed old man in charge, "you may as well give it up."
"So I are without your telling," growled the countryman.
"Very well; I want your horse for a couple of hours. The Squire's ill, and I have to fetch the doctor."
And without another word, and heedless of the ejaculations of the bewildered Hodder, he began to loose the animal's girths.
"I'm blamed if you have a hair of him," said the yokel.
"I don't want one. Here!" and he pitched him a half-crown. The man gaped stupidly at the unharnessing of his beast, and began to pump up for another protest.
But before the words were ready, Mr Armstrong had led the horse out of the shafts and had vaulted on his bare back.
"Eh," sputtered Hodder, "may I--"
"Good-bye and thanks," said the tutor, clapping his heels to the animal's flanks; "you shall have him back safe."
And he plunged away, leaving the gaping son of the soil, with his half- crown in his hand, to the laborious task of hoisting his lower jaw back into its normal position.
Dr Brandram, in whose medical preserves Maxfield Manor lay, was solacing himself with an after-dinner pipe in his little cottage at Yeld, when the tutor, crusted in snow from head to foot, broke unceremoniously on his privacy. An intuition told the doctor what was the matter before even his visitor could say--
"The Squire has had a stroke. Come at once."
The doctor put down his pipe, and, with a sigh, kicked off his cosy slippers.
"He has chosen a bad night, Armstrong. How are the roads?"
"A foot deep. Shall you drive or ride?"
"I never ride."
"You'll need both horses to get through, and I can lend you a spent third."
"Thank you. How did he look?"
"He knew what had happened, I think, but could not speak or move."
"Of course. Suppose you and I do the latter, and postpone the former till we are under weigh."
In less than ten minutes, the doctor's gig was trundling through the snow, with three horses to drag it, and Mr Armstrong in charge of the reins.
"Yes," said the doctor, "he's been leading up to this for a long time, as you have probably observed."
"I can't say I have," said Mr Armstrong.
"Ah! well, you've only known him a year. I knew him twenty years ago."
"Ah!" replied the tutor, chirruping encouragement to the horses.
"Roger Ingleton's life twenty years ago was a life to make an insurance company cheerful," said the doctor.
"What changed it?"
"He had a scape-grace son. They fell out--there was a furious quarrel-- and one day the father and son--ugh!--fought, with clenched fists, sir, like two--two costermongers!--and the boy did not get the best of it. He left home, and no wonder, and was never heard of since. Faugh! it was a sickening business."
"That explains what he was saying this afternoon about a son he had once. He was telling me about it when he was struck."
"Ay! that blow has been owing him for twenty years. It is the last round of the fight, Armstrong. But," continued he, "this is all a secret. No one knows it at Maxfield. I doubt if your pupil so much as imagines he ever had a brother."
"He has never mentioned it to me," said the tutor.
"No need that he should know," said the doctor. "Let the dead bury his dead."
"Is he dead, then?"
"Before the Squire married again," said the doctor, "the poor boy went straight to the dogs, and they made an end of him. There! let's talk of something else. I don't know why I tell you what has never passed my lips for twenty years."
"I wish you hadn't," said Mr Armstrong shortly, whipping up his horses.
The two men remained silent during most of that cold, laborious journey. The doctor's few attempts at conversation fell flat, and he took refuge finally in his pipe. As for the tutor, he had his hands full, steering his team between the lane-side ditches, and thinking of the wrecked life that lay waiting at the journey's end.
It was nearly ten o'clock before the dim lights of Maxfield Manor showed ahead. The snow on the home-drive was undisturbed by the wheels of any other vehicle. The mother and son had not returned, at any