und a flower stall
buying sweet mementoes of the country to brighten the bedsides of their
friends within. No one heeded the pale scared boy as he alighted and
went up the steps.

A porter opened the door.

"My father, Mr Cruden, is here; how is he?"

"Is it the gentleman that was brought in in a fit?"

"Yes, in his carriage--is he better?"

"Will you step in and see the doctor?"

The doctor was not in his room when the boy was ushered in, and it
seemed an age before he entered.

"You are Mr Cruden's son?" said he gravely.

"Yes--is he better?"

"He was brought here about half-past three, insensible, with apoplexy."

"Is he better now?" asked Horace again, knowing perfectly well what the
dreaded answer would be.

"He is not, my boy," said the doctor gravely. "We telegraphed to your
mother at once, as you know--but before that telegram could have reached
her your poor father--"

It was enough. Poor Horace closed his ears convulsively against the
fatal word, and dropped back on his chair with a gasp.

The doctor put his hand kindly on the boy's shoulder.

"Are you here alone?" said he, presently.

"My mother and brother will be here directly."

"Your father lies in a private ward. Will you wait till they come, or
will you go up now?"

A struggle passed through the boy's mind. An instinctive horror of a
sight hitherto unknown struggled hard with the impulse to rush at once
to his father's bedside. At length he said, falteringly,--

"I will go now, please."

When Mrs Cruden and Reginald arrived half an hour later, they found
Horace where the doctor had left him, on his knees at his father's
bedside.

CHAPTER TWO.

A COME-DOWN IN THE WORLD.

Mr Cruden had the reputation of being one of the most respectable as
well as one of the richest men in his part of the county. And it is
fair to say he took far more pride in the former quality than the
latter. Indeed, he made no secret of the fact that he had not always
been the rich man he was when our story opens. But he was touchy on the
subject of his good family and his title to the name of gentleman, which
he had taught his sons to value far more than the wealth which
accompanied it, and which they might some day expect to inherit.

His choice of a school for them was quite consistent with his views on
this point. Wilderham was not exactly an aristocratic school, but it
was a school where money was thought less of than "good style," as