Page:Guy Boothby--A Bid for Fortune.djvu/74

64 had passed through it he carefully locked it and dropped the key into his breeches pocket. Then he led the way upstairs by the beautiful oak stair case I had so much admired on entering the house.

When we reached the first landing, which was of noble proportions and must have contained upon its walls nearly a hundred family portraits all coated with the dust of years, he approached a door and threw it open. A feeble light straggled in through the closed shutters, and revealed an almost empty room. In the centre stood a large canopied bed, of antique design. The walls were wainscoted, and the massive chimney-piece was carved with heraldic designs. I enquired what room this might be.

"This is where all our family were born," he answered. "'Twas here your father first saw the light of day."

I looked at it with a new interest. It seemed hard to believe that this was the birthplace of my own father, the man whom I remembered so well in a place and life so widely different. My companion noticed the look upon my face, and, I suppose, felt constrained to say something.

"Ah! James!" he said sorrowfully. "Ye were always a giddy, roving lad. I remember ye well." (He passed his hand across his eyes, to brush away a tear, I thought, but his next speech disabused me of any such notion.) "I remember that but a day or two before ye went ye blooded my nose in the orchard, and the very morning ye decamped ye borrowed half-a-crown of me, and never paid it back."

A sudden instinct prompted me to put my hand in my pocket. I took out half-a-crown, and handed it to him without a word. He took it, looked at it longingly,