s and for all things had died out in him, and he only
wished to commend his soul to God.

That night, while the owls were hooting from the forest that encircled
the sleeping townlet, and the South-Avon was gurgling through the wooden
piles of the bridge, Sir John died there in the arms of his wife. She
concealed nothing of the cause of her husband's death save the subject of
the quarrel, which she felt it would be premature to announce just then,
and until proof of her status should be forthcoming. But before a month
had passed, it happened, to her inexpressible sorrow, that the child of
this clandestine union fell sick and died. From that hour all interest
in the name and fame of the Horseleighs forsook the younger of the twain
who called themselves wives of Sir John, and, being careless about her
own fame, she took no steps to assert her claims, her legal position
having, indeed, grown hateful to her in her horror at the tragedy. And
Sir William Byrt, the curate who had married her to her husband, being an
old man and feeble, was not disinclined to leave the embers unstirred of
such a fiery matter as this, and to assist her in letting established
things stand. Therefore, Edith retired with the nurse, her only
companion and friend, to her native town, where she lived in absolute
obscurity till her death in middle age. Her brother was never seen again
in England.

A strangely corroborative sequel to the story remains to be told. Shortly
after the death of Sir John Horseleigh, a soldier of fortune returned
from the Continent, called on Dame Horseleigh the fictitious, living in
widowed state at Clyfton Horseleigh, and, after a singularly brief
courtship, married her. The tradition at Havenpool and elsewhere has
ever been that this man was already her husband, Decimus Strong, who
remarried her for appearance' sake only.

The illegitimate son of this lady by Sir John succeeded to the estates
and honours, and his son after him, there being nobody on the alert to
investigate their pretensions. Little difference would it have made to
the present generation, however, had there been such a one, for the
family in all its branches, lawful and unlawful, has been extinct these
many score years, the last representative but one being killed at the
siege of Sherton Castle, while attacking in the service of the
Parliament, and the other being outlawed later in the same century for a
debt of ten pounds, and dying in the county