His other letter was that one which poor Roger Musgrave had written amid all the echoes of his empty house. This agitated and excited the Colonel much more than the other had done. His spectacles grew dim while he was reading it--he gave utterance to various exclamations at the different points of the letter. He said, "Very true!" "Very natural!" "Poor fellow!" "Exactly as I should have felt myself!"--and showed other demonstrations of interest in his restless movements and neglect of his half-finished breakfast. The conclusion, however, threw him into evident distress; he got up and walked about the room, stopping unconsciously to take up a piece of useless paper on one of the tables and tear it into little pieces. Anxiety and doubt became the prevailing expression of his face. Here in a moment were all his plans for Roger deranged and broken to pieces; and yet it was so natural, so characteristic, on the whole so right and honest, that he could not say a word against it. But it did not grieve him the less on that account. Roger was going to London, that was the sole clue to him; and he had no reply from Sir John Armitage--no response to his own appeal from the influential personages whom he believed himself to have influence with. "He'll be a private soldier by this time; most likely a Guardsman," said the Colonel, and his imagination conjured up the splendid figures under the arches at the Horse Guards with a positive pang, as he thought of Roger Musgrave's ingenuous face turned, crimson and shame-faced, towards the crowd. What could the Colonel do?--nothing but fill his mind with anxious and uncomfortable reflections concerning the life and fortune, and, besides these, the manners and morals, of his young _protegé_--and wait.