HE had scarcely finished his dinner, when young Musgrave came to him, full of excitement and emotion, with a letter in his hand. The Colonel received him with all the more cordiality, that he had not yet quite lost the impression of the Rector’s visit. The young man had evidently something to tell, and that something as evidently was of a nature to move him much.

“You are the only individual who has shown any interest in me,” cried poor Roger; “I could not rest till I had come to tell you: I am not so entirely alone as I supposed I was. Look here, sir, a letter from my mother—my dear mother, whom I have never been able to forget, whom I have never ceased to love. I have done her injustice, Colonel; though she has only written it for my eyes, I bring it to you, because to you I have accused her unjustly. My mother has neither forgotten nor forsaken me!”

And with honest tears in his eyes, the young man thrust his letter into the Colonel’s hands, half reluctant, it is true, to show his mother’s expressions of love, but eager, above all, that she should be done full justice to, and acquitted of all unkindness. The Colonel took the letter with grave sympathy. It was not by way of conquering Roger’s heart entirely that he put on his spectacles with so much serious attention, and applied himself to the hurried and half-coherent letter as if it were something of the gravest importance. He did naturally, and spontaneously from his own heart, this, which was the most exquisite compliment to the young man; and the Colonel’s glasses grew dim as he read. It was the letter of a weak, loving woman, with too little strength of character to assert for herself any right of protecting or succouring her first-born, who was alien and strange to her husband and his family. One could almost see the gentle, broken-spirited woman over-ridden even by her own children, uncertain of her own mind, in weak health, and with nerves which everything affected, as one glanced over those hurried lines, which seemed to be written in absolute fear of discovery. There was little in them but the mother’s yearning for her boy—her dear boy, her first-born, her own Roger, whom she prayed for on her knees every day, and thought of every hour. There was neither wisdom nor reason in the epistle—the poor woman had nothing to advise, nothing to offer. A cold observer might have thrown the whole away as affectionate nonsense, and desired to know what benefit that could be to the young man in his troubles. The Colonel knew better. “Therewithal the water stood in his eyes.” He knew, without a word from Roger, how this tender touch had stanched the wounds of the young man’s heart.

The only thing which he did not understand was a blurred and hasty postscript, to the effect that the enclosed was her own, and that her dear boy need have no hesitation in using it. This Musgrave explained to him by holding up, as he received back the letter, a twenty-pound note.

“And my mother enclosed this, sir,” he said, looking up with an honest eagerness which twenty twenty-pound notes could not have produced—the poor lad was so proud to be able to show this evidence of his mother’s concern for him. “I know she must have saved it up—spared it from her own necessities for me; I know she must, for she knows very well I would never receive an alms from him,” cried poor Roger. “I—I daresay you think it’s not very much to talk about, Colonel, but I could not rest till you had seen that I was wrong. To think I should have done her such injustice!—and you perceive, sir, that I can indeed take a week or two’s leisure before I decide upon my future now.”

“I am very glad of it,” said the Colonel; “and still more glad that you have your mother’s letter to comfort you. Take a lesson by it my boy, and never think you’re forsaken. If we could know exactly our neighbour’s circumstances, and see into their hearts, we would be slow to judge them, let alone dear friends. ‘Can a mother forget her child, that she should not have compassion on the son of her womb?’ Ah! my young friend, God knows better than we do the nature he has made. Here are two things come at once—your heart is comforted, and you are content to wait?”

Roger hung his head for a moment at the last proposition; he felt a little ashamed of giving in to the dawn of expectation which his last interview with Colonel Sutherland had excited in him in spite of himself; but the Colonel’s unlooked-for kindness, and the affection of his mother, had warmed the young man’s heart, and put him once more on good terms with the world. He began to believe in friendship and kindness, and to think that, after all, matters were not hopeless with him; but still his high spirit revolted from the idea of waiting till an application for aid had been made on his behalf, and doing nothing on his own account till that had been granted or refused.

“I can wait, and think it all over again for a few days,” he said, with a little hesitation, “though indeed there is little to think of; for the case is not at all changed; but because you wish it, Colonel—you who have been so kind to me. I would be a poor fellow indeed, if I could not wait for a time for your pleasure.”

“Very well,” said Colonel Sutherland, with a smile; “we will let it stand on these grounds—it will please me. I have made a discovery also to-day. I find that your Sir John Armitage is an old friend of mine. I shall be very glad to seek him up for my own sake; they tell me he is invalid, and unsettled; but that should not make him less cordial to his fellow-creatures. We have been under fire together, and under canvas. He is an older acquaintance of mine than of yours. It will be odd if two old soldiers, when they lay their heads together, can do nothing to help on a young one. I have a little influence myself, and my own boy is secure. Some day you two may stand by each other when we old fellows are gone. I daresay, if you were together, you would not be long of making friends with my Ned. He is an honest fellow, though his father says it, and I think never gave me an hour’s pain.”

“But what can I say? I who have no claim whatever on your kindness, why are you so good to me?” cried Roger, astonished; “thanking you is folly; I have no words for it; it is beyond thanks; why are you so generous to me?”

“Tut, boy, nonsense!—I have sons of my own,” said Colonel Sutherland; “and what is the good of an old man in this world? By-the-bye, tell me—have you ever sought or admitted the friendship of your neighbours since your grief? There are various families hereabout, I understand; your Rector for example—I am afraid you must have repulsed that good man in your first trouble—eh?—remember I am hard of hearing; you were too melancholy, too miserable for sympathy, and you have taken it into your head since that they had ceased to care for you?”

“I was thankful for all the sympathy I got; I trusted everybody then,” said Roger, simply; “but—it does not matter,” he said, after a little hesitation; “I found out the difference afterwards; no—it was not me.”

“But the Rector—he has children, a son—was not he very friendly?” asked the Colonel, with persistence; he wanted to ascertain, as closely as he could, what was the real state of the case.

“Ah, Willy!”—said Roger; he paused a little, and grew red, and shook his head with a slight, involuntary motion, as if to shake off some disagreeable thoughts. “We were very good friends once,” he said—“pah! why should I care—you will not think worse of me, Colonel Sutherland? I had rather not think of Willy. It is the greatest folly in the world, but I cannot help it; when I think of meeting him, perhaps, in my changed circumstances—I who used to be almost, if there was any difference, superior to him—I feel it painful; I don’t like the idea; this is the plain truth. I had rather not go to India for the risk; forgive me! I had rather you knew the worst of me.”

“If that is the worst I am glad to know it,” said the Colonel. “It is a very natural feeling; to have been without it, would have proved you a different person from what I supposed. Now, tell me again; shall you stay here? you are still in your late friend’s house—what is to be done with it?—who does it belong to?—and during this little interval shall you stay here?”

“The Grange is mine,” said Roger, with a little pride; then he continued, with a slightly bitter smile—“next week everything is to be sold—everything—if they leave a wooden stool for poor old Sally in the kitchen, I will be grateful to them; but they cannot sell the Grange. It is entailed—I cannot sell it. Poor, dear old nest, it is the last wreck of all that ever belonged to the Musgraves; everything but that is gone already; yes, though it is empty and desolate I shall stay, till I leave all, in my own house.”

“Then you are heir, not only of love, but at law,” said the Colonel, gravely.

Somehow that changed the aspect of affairs a little. Useless though it was, that old house, empty and desolate, it gave still an indisputable point of inheritance and ancestry, upon which the young outcast could set his foot. It seemed more and more impossible to the Colonel, whose mind was not free of romantic prejudices, and upon whose imagination this circumstance made a great impression, that the young man should be left to his own forlorn devices; and he grew more and more angry at the neighbouring people, who could suffer not only “a worthy youth” to enter the world under circumstances so unfriendly, but could also permit the total extinction of an old family, whom such a young man, once aided to begin, might well resuscitate. However, he wisely kept these thoughts to himself. He exacted a promise from Roger to do nothing without letting him know, and to wait until he should be able to obtain an answer from Sir John Armitage; but, above all, to keep him advised of where he was, and what he was doing—a promise which the youth gave with a slight reluctance. Then a cordial farewell passed between them. They parted like old friends—the young man with grateful affection, the old man with interest and kindness quite fatherly. They had never met till three days ago, yet however long they lived, neither could ever cease now to feel the warmest interest in the other. In the meantime, the Colonel put up this matter of Roger Musgrave in the bundle with his most particular concerns, and gave himself, with the most earnest gravity, to his voluntary task of aiding and helping this stranger, nothing doubting to succeed in it; while Roger, on the other hand, went home to his solitary Grange, not knowing well what to make of it, struggling against the renewed hopes of his mind, fortifying himself against renewed disappointment by recalling his brief but sharp experience of the friendship of the world, and wondering whether he did right to trust, as he could not help trusting, the sincerity of his new friend. The young man paced in front of his house, among the dark trees, revolving over and over these questions which were of so much importance to him, and stimulated in all his hopes, without being aware of it, by that letter of his mother’s, which he prized so much; and Colonel Sutherland sending out for paper, pens, and ink, and receiving in answer a dusty inkstand, a rusted steel pen, and two sheets of post paper highly glazed and with gilt edges, wiped his spectacles, lighted his low bedroom candle, that the light might suit his eyes, and sat down to write.