“Mr. Claude,” I said.

He looked at me as tho’ I had risen from the dead.

“God save us!” he shouted, in a voice that echoed through the narrow street.  “God save us!”

He seemed to go all to pieces.  To my bated questions he replied at length, when he had got his breath, that Captain Clapsaddle had come to town but the day before, and was even then in the coffee-room at his dinner.  Alone?  Yes, alone.  Almost tottering, I mounted the steps, and turned in at the coffee-room door, and stopped.  There sat the captain at a table, the roast and wine untouched before him, his waistcoat thrown open.  He was staring out of the open window into the inn garden beyond, with its shade of cherry trees.  Mr. Claude’s cry had not disturbed his reveries, nor our talk after it.  I went forward.  I touched him on the shoulder, and he sprang up, and looked once into my face, and by some trick of the mind uttered the very words Mr. Claude had used.

“God save us!  Richard!” And he opened his arms and strained me to his great chest, calling my name again and again, while the tears coursed down the furrows of his cheeks.  For I marked the furrows for the first time, and the wrinkles settling in his forehead and around his eyes.  What he said when he released me, nor my replies, can I remember now, but at last he called, in his ringing voice, to mine host: 

“A bottle from your choicest bin, Claude!  Some of Mr. Bordley’s.  For he that was lost is found.”

The hundred questions I had longed to ask were forgotten.  A peace stole upon me that I had not felt since I had looked upon his face before.  The wine was brought by Mr. Claude, and opened, and it was mine host who broke the silence, and the spell.

“Your very good health, Mr. Richard,” he said; “and may you come to your own again!”

“I drink it with all my heart, Richard,” replied Captain Daniel.  But he glanced at me sadly, and his honest nature could put no hope into his tone.  “We have got him back again, Mr. Claude.  And God has answered our prayers.  So let us be thankful.”  And he sat down in silence, gazing at me in pity and tenderness, while Mr. Claude withdrew.  “I can give you but a sad welcome home, my lad,” he said presently, with a hesitation strange to him. “’Tis not the first bad news I have had to break in my life to your family, but I pray it may be the last.”  He paused.  I knew he was thinking of the black tidings he had once brought my mother.  “Richard, your grandfather is dead,” he ended abruptly.

I nodded wonderingly.

“What!” he exclaimed; “you have heard already?”

“Mr. Manners told me, in London,” I said, completely mystified.

“London!” he cried, starting forward.  “London and Mr. Manners!  Have you been to London?”

“You had my letters to Mr. Carvel?” I demanded, turning suddenly sick.

His eye flashed.

“Never a letter.  We mourned you for dead, Richard.  This is Grafton’s work!” he cried, springing to his feet and striking the table with his great fist, so that the dishes jumped.  “Grafton Carvel, the prettiest villain in these thirteen colonies!  Oh, we shall hang him some day.”