upsetting some one behind him by his recoil, on
seeing his daughter in her motionless attitude by
the dead man.

"My God, Ellinor! what has brought you
here?" he said, almost fiercely.

But she answered as one stupified,

"I don't know. Is he dead?"

"Hush, hush, child; it cannot be helped."

She raised her eyes to the solemn, pitying, awe-
stricken face behind her father's —  the
countenance of Dixon.

"Is he dead?" she asked of him.

The man stepped forwards, respectfully pushing
his master on one side as he did so. He bent
down over the corpse, and looked, and listened,
and then, reaching a candle off the table, he
signed Mr. Wilkins to close the door. And Mr.
Wilkins obeyed, and looked with an intensity of
eagerness almost amounting to faintness on the
experiment, and yet he could not hope. The
flame was steady—  steady and pitilessly unstirred,
even when it was adjusted close to mouth and
nostril; the head was raised up by one of Dixon's
stalwart arms, while he held the candle in the
other hand. Ellinor fancied that there was some
trembling on Dixon's part, and grasped his wrist
tightly in order to give it the requisite motionless
firmness.

All in vain. The head was placed again on the
cushions, the servant rose and stood by his
master, looking sadly on the dead man, whom,
living, none of them had liked or cared for, and
Ellinor sat on, quiet and tearless, as one in a
trance.

"How was it, father?" at length she asked.

He would fain have had her ignorant of all,
but so questioned by her lips, so adjured by her
eyes, in the very presence of death, he could not
choose but speak the truth; he spoke it in
convulsive gasps, each sentence an effort:

"He taunted me —  he was insolent, beyond my
patience —  I could not bear it. I struck him —  I
can't tell how it was. He must have hit his head
in falling. Oh, my God! one little hour ago I was
innocent of this man's blood!" He covered his
face with his hands.

Ellinor took the candle again; kneeling behind
Mr. Dunster's head, she tried the futile
experiment once more.

"Could not a doctor do some good?" she
asked of Dixon, in a low hopeless voice.

"No!" said he, shaking his head, and looking
with a sidelong glance at his master, who seemed
to shrivel uj) and to shrink away at the bare
suggestion. " Doctors can do nought, I'm afeared.
All that a doctor could do, I take it, would be to
open a vein, and that I could do along with the
best of them, if I had but my fleam here." He
fumbled in liis pockets as he spoke, and, as
chance would have it, the "fleam" (or cattle-
lancet) was somewhere about his dress. He drew
it out, smoothed and tried it on his finger.
Ellinor tried to bare the arm, but turned sick as
she did so. Her father started eagerly forwards,
and did what was necessary with hurried,
trembling hands. If they had cared less about
the result, they might have been more afraid of
the consequences of the operation in the hands
of one so ignorant as Dixon. But, vein or artery,
it signified little; no living blood gushed out;
only a little watery moisture followed the cut of
the fleam. They laid him back on his strange
sad death-couch. Dixon spoke next.

"Master Ned!" said he  —  for he had known
Mr. Wilkins in his days of bright careless
boyhood, and almost was carried back to them by the
sense of charge and protection which the servant's
presence of mind and sharpened senses gave him
over his master on this dreary night " Master
Ned! we must do summut."

No one spoke. What was to be done?

"Did any folk see him come here?" Dixon
asked, after a time. Ellinor looked up to hear
her father's answer, a wild hope coming into her
mind that all might be concealed, somehow; she
did not know how, nor did she think of any
consequences save of saving her father from the
vague dread trouble and punishment that she
was aware would await him if all were known.

Mr. Wilkins did not seem to hear; in fact, he
did not hear anything but the unspoken echo of
his own last words, that went booming through
his heart:

"An hour ago I was innocent of this man's
blood! Only an hour ago!"

Dixon got up and poured out half a tumblerful
of raw spirit from the brandy-bottle that stood
on the table.

"Drink this, Master Ned!" putting it to his
master's lips. "Nay" —  to Ellinor—  "it will do
him no harm; only bring back his senses, which,
poor gentleman! are scared away. We shall
need all our wits. Now, sir, please to answer
my question. Did any one see Master Dunster
come here?"

"I don't know," said Mr. Wilkins, recovering
his speech. " It all seems in a mist. He offered
to walk home with me; I did not want him. I
was almost rude to him to keep him off. I did
not want to talk of business; I had taken too
much wine to be very clear, and some things at
the office were not quite in order, and he had
found it out. If any one heard our conversation,
they must know I did not want him to come with
me. Oh! why would he come? He was as
obstinate —  he would come —  and here it has been
his death!"

"Well, sir, what's done can't be undone, and
I'm sure we'd any of us bring him back to life if
we could, even by cutting off our hands, though
he was a mighty plaguy chap while he'd breath
in him. But what I'm thinking is this: it will,
maybe, go awkward with you, sir, if he is found
here. One can't say. But don't you think, miss,
that, as he's neither kith nor kin to miss him, we
might just bury him away before morning,
somewhere? There's better nor four hours of dark.
I wish we could put him in the churchyard, but
that can't be; but to my mind, the sooner we set
about digging a place for him to lie in, poor