Roger Ingleton, Minor | Page 6

for him. By the way,"--here the doctor held out a sealed packet--"this was lying on the old man's table last night. It was probably to give it to you that he sent for you in the afternoon, and then forgot it. Well, good-bye. I shall come to-morrow if the roads are passable. I only hope, for my sake, all this will not make any difference to your remaining at Maxfield."
Mr Armstrong finished his toilet leisurely, and then proceeded to examine the packet.
It was a large envelope, addressed, "Frank Armstrong, Esquire," in the old man's quavering hand.
Within was another envelope, firmly sealed, on which the same hand had written these words--
"To be given unopened into the hands of Roger Ingleton, junior, on his twentieth birthday."
The effort of writing those few words had evidently been almost more than the writer could accomplish, for towards the end the letters became almost illegible, and the words were huddled in a heap at the corner of the paper. The sealing, too, to judge from the straggling blots of wax all over and the ineffective marks of the seal, must have been the labour of a painful morning to the feeble, half-blind old man.
To the tutor, however, as he held the missive in his hand, and looked at it with the reverence one feels for a token from the dead, it seemed to make one or two things tolerably clear.
First, that the contents, whatever they were, were secret and important, else the old man would never have taken upon himself a labour he could so easily have devolved upon another. Secondly, that this old man, rightly or wrongly, regarded Frank Armstrong as a man to be trusted, and contemplated that a year hence he would occupy the same position with regard to the heir of Maxfield as he did now.
Having arrived at which conclusions, the tutor returned the packet to its outer envelope and locked the whole up in his desk. Which done, he descended to the breakfast-room.
As he had expected, no one was there. What was worse, there was no sign either of fire or breakfast. To a man who has not tasted food for about twenty hours, such a discovery could not fail to be depressing, and Mr Armstrong meekly decided to summon Raffles to his assistance. As he passed down the passage, he could not forbear halting for a moment at the door of a certain room, behind which he knew the mortal remains of his dead employer lay. As he paused, not liking to enter, liking still less to pass on, the sound of footsteps within startled him. It was not difficult, after a moment's reflection, to guess to whom they belonged, and the tutor softly tapped on the door.
The only answer was the abrupt halting of the footsteps. Mr Armstrong entered and found his pupil.
Roger was standing in the ulster he had worn last night. His eyes were black and heavy with weariness, his face was almost as white as the face of him who lay on the couch, and as he turned to the open door his teeth chattered with cold.
"I couldn't leave him alone," whispered he apologetically, as the tutor laid a gentle hand on his arm.
"Of course--of course," replied Mr Armstrong. "I guessed it was you. Would you rather be left alone?"
"No," said the lad wearily. "I thought by staying here I should get some help--some--I don't know what, Armstrong. But instead, I'm half asleep. I've been yawning and shivering, and forgotten who was here-- and--" Here his eyes filled with tears.
"Dear old fellow," said the tutor, "you are fagged out. Come and get a little rest."
Roger sighed, partly to feel himself beaten, partly at the prospect of rest.
"All right!" said he. "I'm ashamed you should see me so weak when I wanted to be strong. Yes, I'll come--in one minute."
He walked over to the couch and knelt beside it. His worn-out body had succumbed at last to the misery against which it had battled so long, and for a moment he yielded himself to his sorrow. The tutor waited a moment, and then walked quietly from the room.
For a quarter of an hour he paced restlessly in the cold passage outside; then, as his pupil did not appear, he returned to the chamber of death. Roger Ingleton, as he expected, had fallen asleep where he knelt.
The wretched days between the death and the funeral dragged on in the usual dismal fashion. Mrs Ingleton kept her room; the domestics took the occasion to neglect their work, and Roger Ingleton, minor, passed through all the stages from inconsolable misery to subdued cheerfulness. Mr Armstrong alone went through no stages, but remained the same unimpassioned individual he had been ever since he became a member of the Maxfield household.
"Armstrong," said