y lucid. He wanted to get up, and Lucy
felt it would be brutal to balk any wish he had. He asked if he might go
out. The day was fine and warm. It was February, and there was a feeling
in the air as if the spring were at hand. In sheltered places the
snowdrops and the crocuses gave the garden the blitheness of an Italian
picture; and you felt that on that multi-coloured floor might fitly trip
the delicate angels of Messer Perugino. The rector had an old
pony-chaise, in which he was used to visit his parishioners, and in this
all three drove out.

'Let us go down to the marshes,' said Allerton.

They drove slowly along the winding road till they came to the broad
salt marshes. Beyond glittered the placid sea. There was no wind. Near
them a cow looked up from her grazing and lazily whisked her tail.
Lucy's heart began to beat more quickly. She felt that her father, too,
looked upon that scene as the most typical of his home. Other places had
broad acres and fine trees, other places had forest land and purple
heather, but there was something in those green flats that made them
seem peculiarly their own. She took her father's hand, and silently
their eyes looked onwards. A more peaceful look came into Fred
Allerton's worn face, and the sigh that broke from him was not
altogether of pain. Lucy prayed that it might still remain hidden from
him that those fair, broad fields were his no longer.

That night, she had an intuition that death was at hand. Fred Allerton
was very silent. Since his release from prison he had spoken barely a
dozen sentences a day, and nothing served to wake him from his lethargy.
But there was a curious restlessness about him now, and he would not go
to bed. He sat in an armchair, and begged them to draw it near the
window. The sky was cloudless, and the moon shone brightly. Fred
Allerton could see the great old elms that surrounded Hamlyn's Purlieu;
and his eyes were fixed steadily upon them. Lucy saw them, too, and she
thought sadly of the garden which she had loved so well, and of the dear
trees which old masters of the place had tended so lovingly. Her heart
filled when she thought of the grey stone house and its happy, spacious
rooms.

Suddenly there was a sound, and she looked up quickly. Her father's head
had fallen back, and he was breathing with a strange noisiness. She
called her friend.

'I think the end has come at last,' she said.

'Would you like me to fetch the doctor?'

'It wil