name with the
guilt laid on the father's?" Then there had come into Sim's eyes
something that gave a meaning to his earlier words, "Ralph, you don't
know what you ask." Ah, did he not know now but too well? Ralph walked
across the room with a sense as of a great burden of guilt weighing
him down. The grave was not deep--oh, would it were, would it were!
Would that the grave were the end of all! But no, it was as the old
book said: when one dies, those who survive ask what he has left
behind; the angel who bends above him asks what he has sent before.
And the father who had borne him in his arms--whom he had borne--what
had he sent before?

Ralph tramped heavily to and fro. His dog slept on the mat outside his
door, and, unused to such continued sounds within, began to scrape and
growl.

After all, there was no certain evidence yet. To-morrow morning he
would go up the fell and see Sim alone. He must know the truth. If it
concerned him as closely as he divined, the occasion to conceal it was
surely gone by with this night's event. Then Robbie Anderson,--what
did he mean? Ralph recalled some dim memory of the young dalesman
asking about his father. Robbie was kind to Sim, too, when the others
shunned him. What did it all mean?

With a heavy heart Ralph began to undress. He had unbelted himself and
thrown off his jerkin, when he thought of the paper that had fallen
from his father's open breast as he lifted him on to the mare. What
was it? Yes, there it was in his pocket, and with a feverish anxiety
Ralph opened it.

Had he clung to any hope that the black cloud that appeared to be
hanging over him would not, after all, envelop him? Alas! that last
vestige of hope must leave him. The paper was a warrant for his own
arrest on a charge of treason. It had been issued at the court of the
high constable at Carlisle, and set forth that Ralph Ray had conspired
to subvert the government of his sovereign while a captain in the
trained bands of the rebel army of the "late usurper." It was signed
and countersigned, and was marked for the service of James Wilson,
King's agent. It was dated too; yes, two days before Wilson's death.

All was over now; this was the beginning of the end; the shadow had
fallen. By that paradox of nature which makes disaster itself less
hard to bear than the apprehension of disaster, Ralph felt relieved
when he knew the worst. There was much of the mystery still
unexplained, but the morrow would reve