*CHAPTER VII* *The Mysterious Packets* It was not till Tuesday evening that Benjamin Green was in a fit condition to visit his father again. He found the old man in bed, very feeble and shaky, but determined as ever that no power on earth should prevail on him to leave the homely roof which had sheltered him for so long. "I daren’t exactly carry him off as he is," thought Ben, after he had tried every form of persuasion and threat which occurred to him. "If he died on my hands upon the way I’d get into a pretty row, I suppose, taking him out of his house against his will. They’d say I did it only for the money. It’s a pity I ever let on that I wanted it so much." He leant back in his chair with his hands thrust into his pockets, and allowed his eyes to wander round the room. They lit upon his father’s desk, carefully laid out as the centre ornament on the top of the high chest of drawers at the foot of the bed. "I wonder what he’s got in there," the rascally son said to himself. "I’ll make a point of having a good hunt through it before long." "Father," he added aloud, "did Mr. Field put his offer in writing when he promised you a hundred pounds for the cottage and the land?" "Maybe he did, and maybe he didn’t," was the ambiguous reply. "It matters not what he said or how he said it. Here I be and here I remain, same as I have done all my life long. It’s no use you or the squire trying to make me change my mind, no manner of use, I tell you. It’s in this little room that I’ll be when the call comes to go up higher, and I’ll bide here till it reaches me, and not trouble nobody whiles I wait." Ben shrugged his shoulders impatiently as he rose to go. "I must see if I can’t make Mr. Field fork out the tin somehow," he muttered. "If I wait till the house falls down, he may not see the fun of paying so much for a field that will sooner or later follow suit. It won’t be difficult to find out if the proposal’s in black and white, if only I can get to the inside of that desk." As Ben issued from the door of the cottage he caught sight of someone contemplating the scene from the top of the wooden stair which led to the beach. He drew back into the shelter of the porch to watch the stranger. "Seems to me as if that man’s figure is familiar to me," he said. "I wonder where I’ve seen him before. He appears mighty interested in the place, the way he’s staring so hard at everything. I wish I could get a better view of his face." As he spoke, the man apparently finished his survey and commenced to descend the steps to the shore. A minute later, Jenkins, the Farncourt footman, walked past the end of the garden with some towels over his arm. Ben had struck up an acquaintance with him during one of his not infrequent visits to "The Bull," and he now hailed him from the door.