isted Mr. Paddock to
make a comfortable couch in the window-seat, where they stretched out
Clark upon his back.

Still he seemed unconscious. 'We must get a doctor,' said Selina. 'O,
my dear John, how is it you be taken like this?'

'My impression is that he's dead!' murmured Mr. Paddock. 'He don't
breathe enough to move a tomtit's feather.'

There were plenty to volunteer to go for a doctor, but as it would be at
least an hour before he could get there the case seemed somewhat
hopeless. The dancing-party ended as unceremoniously as it had begun;
but the guests lingered round the premises till the doctor should arrive.
When he did come the sergeant-major's extremities were already cold, and
there was no doubt that death had overtaken him almost at the moment that
he had sat down.

The medical practitioner quite refused to accept the unhappy Selina's
theory that her revelation had in any way induced Clark's sudden
collapse. Both he and the coroner afterwards, who found the immediate
cause to be heart-failure, held that such a supposition was unwarranted
by facts. They asserted that a long day's journey, a hurried drive, and
then an exhausting dance, were sufficient for such a result upon a heart
enfeebled by fatty degeneration after the privations of a Crimean winter
and other trying experiences, the coincidence of the sad event with any
disclosure of hers being a pure accident.

This conclusion, however, did not dislodge Selina's opinion that the
shock of her statement had been the immediate stroke which had felled a
constitution so undermined.

V

At this date the Casterbridge Barracks were cavalry quarters, their
adaptation to artillery having been effected some years later. It had
been owing to the fact that the ---th Dragoons, in which John Clark had
served, happened to be lying there that Selina made his acquaintance. At
the time of his death the barracks were occupied by the Scots Greys, but
when the pathetic circumstances of the sergeant-major's end became known
in the town the officers of the Greys offered the services of their fine
reed and brass band, that he might have a funeral marked by due military
honours. His body was accordingly removed to the barracks, and carried
thence to the churchyard in the Durnover quarter on the following
afternoon, one of the Greys' most ancient and docile chargers being
blacked up to represent Clark's horse on the occasion.

Everybody pitied Selina, wh