ame at the door.

"Come in, Raffles," said Mr Armstrong, beginning to see some prospect
of a shave after all.

It was not Raffles, but Dr Brandram, equipped for the road.

"I'm off, Armstrong," said he. "I'd ask you to come and drive me, only
I think you are wanted here. See the boy eats enough and doesn't mope.
You must amuse him if you can. You understand what I told you last
night was not 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 ha