In which There are Some Astonishing Revelations with Regard to Dr. Mulhaus and Captain Desborough.

At ten o’clock the next morning arrived the Major, the Doctor, and Halbert; and the first notice they had of it was the Doctor’s voice in the passage, evidently in a great state of excitement.

“No more the common bower-bird than you, sir; a new species. His eyes are red instead of blue, and the whole plumage is lighter. I will call it after you, my dear Major.”

“You have got to shoot him first,” said the Major.

“I’ll soon do that,” said the Doctor, bursting into the room-door. “How do you do, all of you? Sam, glad to see you back again. Brentwood, you are welcome to your own house. Get me your gun — where is it?”

“In my bedroom,” said the Captain.

The Doctor went off after it. He reappeared again to complain that the caps would not fit; but, being satisfied on that score, he disappeared down the garden, on murderous thoughts intent.

Sam got his father away into the verandah, and told him all his plans. I need hardly say that they met with the Major’s entire approval. All his plans I said; no, not all. Sam never hinted at the end and object of all his endeavours; he never said a word about his repurchase of Clere. The Major had no more idea that Sam had ever thought of such a thing, or had been making inquiries, than had the owner of Clere himself.

“Sam, my dear boy,” said he, “I am very sorry to lose you, and we shall have but a dull time of it henceforth; but I am sure it is good for a man to go out into the world by himself” (and all that sort of thing). “When you are gone, Brentwood and I mean to live together, to console one another.”

“My dear, are you coming in?” said Mrs. Buckley. “Here is a letter for you, which I ought to have given you before.”

The Major went in and received the mysterious epistle which the captain had brought the night before. When he saw it he whistled.

They sat waiting to know the contents. He was provokingly long in opening it, and when he did, he said nothing, but read it over twice with a lengthening visage. Now also it became apparent that there was another letter inside, at the superscription of which the Major having looked, put it in his pocket, and turning round to the mantel-piece, with his back to the others, began drumming against the fender with his foot, musingly.

A more aggravating course of proceeding he could not have resorted to. Here they were all dying of curiosity, and not a word did he seem inclined to answer. At last, Mrs. Buckley, not able to hold out any longer, said —

“From the Governor, was it not, my love?”

“Yes,” he said, “from the Governor. And very important too,” and then relapsed into silence.

Matters were worse than ever. But after a few minutes he turned round to them suddenly, and said —

“You have heard of Baron Landstein.”

“What,” said Sam, “the man that the Doctor’s always abusing so? Yes, I know all about him, of course.”

“The noble Landstein,” said Alice. “In spite of the Doctor’s abuse he is a great favourite of mine. How well he seems to have behaved at Jena with those two Landwehr regiments.”

“Landsturm, my love,” said the Major.

“Yes, Landsturm I mean. I wonder if he is still alive, or whether he died of his wounds.”

“The Doctor,” said Sam, “always speaks of him as dead.”

“He is not only alive,” said the Major, “but he is coming here. He will be here today. He may come any minute.”

“What! the great Landstein,” said Sam.

“The same man,” said the Major.

“The Doctor will have a quarrel with him, father. He is always abusing him. He says he lost the battle of Jena, or something.”

“Be quiet, Sam, and don’t talk. Watch what follows.”

The Doctor was seen hurrying up the garden-walk. He put down his gun outside, and bursting open the glass door, stepped into the room, holding aloft a black bird, freshly killed, and looking around him for applause.

“There!” he said; “I told you so.”

The Major walked across the room, and put a letter in his hand, the one which was enclosed in the mysterious epistle before mentioned. “Baron,” he said, “here is a letter for you.”

The Doctor looked round as one would who had received a blow, and knew not who smote him. He took the letter, and went into the window to read it.

No one spoke a word. “This, then, my good old tutor,” thought Sam, “turns out to be the great Landstein. Save us, what a piece of romance.” But though he thought this, he never said anything, and catching Alice’s eye, followed it to the window. There, leaning against the glass, his face buried in his hands, and his broad back shaking with emotion, stood Doctor Mulhaus. Alas! no. Our kindly, good, hearty, learned, irritable, but dearly-beloved old friend, is no more. There never was such a man in reality: but in his place stands Baron von Landstein of the Niederwald.

What the contents of the Doctor’s (I must still call him so) letter, I cannot tell you. But I have seen the letter which Major Buckley received enclosing it, and I can give it you word for word. It is from the Governor himself, and runs thus:—

“MY DEAR MAJOR,

“I am informed that the famous Baron von Landstein has been living in your house for some years, under the name of Dr. Mulhaus. In fact, I believe he is a partner of yours. I therefore send the enclosed under cover to you, and when I tell you that it has been forwarded to me through the Foreign Office, and the Colonial Office, and is, in point of fact, an autograph letter from the King of P—— to the Baron, I am sure that you will ensure its safe delivery.

“The Secretary is completely ‘fixed’ with his estimates. The salaries for the Supreme Court Office are thrown out. He must resign. Do next election send us a couple of moderates.

“Yours, &c., G.G.”

This was the Major’s letter. But the Doctor stood still there, moved more deeply than any had seen him before, while Alice and Sam looked at one another in blank astonishment.

At length he turned and spoke, but not to them, to the empty air. Spoke as one aroused from a trance. Things hard to understand, yet having some thread of sense in them too.

“So he has sent for me,” he said, “when it seems that he may have some use for me. So the old man is likely to go at last, and we are to have the golden age again. If talking could do it, assuredly we should. He has noble instincts, this young fellow, and some sense. He has sent for me. If H— — and B— — and Von U— — and myself can but get his ear!

“Oh, Rhineland! my own beloved Rhineland, shall I see you again? Shall I sit once more in my own grey castle, among the vineyards, above the broad gleaming river, and hear the noises from the town come floating softly up the hillside! I wonder are there any left who will remember —”

He took two short turns through the room, and then he turned and spoke to them again, looking all the time at Sam.

“I am the Baron von Landstein. The very man we have so often talked of, and whose character we have so freely discussed. When the French attacked us, I threw myself into the foremost ranks of my countrymen, and followed the Queen with two regiments which I had raised almost entirely myself.

“I fled away from the blood-red sun of Jena, wounded and desperate. That sun,” I thought, “has set on the ruins of Great Frederick’s kingdom. Prussia is a province of France: what can happen worse than this? I will crawl home to my castle and die.

“I had no castle to crawl to. My brother, he who hung upon the same breast with me, he who learnt his first prayer beside me, he who I loved and trusted above all other men, had turned traitor, had sold himself to the French, had deceived my bride that was to be, and seized my castle.

“I fled to England, to Drumston, Major. I had some knowledge of physic, and called myself a doctor. I threw myself into the happy English domestic life which I found there, and soon got around me men and women whom I loved full well.

“Old John Thornton and his sister knew my secret, as did Lord Credit............