It was a chance at
which any young man would have jumped, and Collingwood had been greatly
envied when it was known that Sir John Standridge had offered it to him.
And yet he was conscious that if he could have done precisely what he
desired, he would have stayed longer at Barford, in order to see more of
Nesta Mallathorpe. Already it seemed a long time to the coming spring,
when he would be back--and free to go North again.
But Collingwood was fated to go North once more much sooner than he had
dreamed of. As he sat at breakfast in his rooms on the Monday morning
after his departure from Barford, turning over his newspaper with no
particular aim or interest, his attention was suddenly and sharply
arrested by a headline. Even that headline might not have led him to
read what lay beneath. But in the same instant in which he saw it he
also saw a name--Mallathorpe. In the next he knew that heavy trouble had
fallen on Normandale Grange, the very day after he had left it.
This is what Collingwood read as he sat, coffee-cup in one hand,
newspaper in the other--staring at the lines of unleaded type:
TRAGIC FATE OF YOUNG YORKSHIRE SQUIRE
"A fatal accident, of a particularly sad and disturbing nature,
occurred near Barford, Yorkshire, on Saturday. About four
o'clock on Saturday afternoon, Mr. Linford Pratt, managing clerk
to Messrs.
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