d asked no more. He sat by the dying man, whose
sufferings, although they were a little alleviated by morphia, made him
restless. He moaned even in his snatches of sleep, and spoke
occasionally--always about the accident. Once he mentioned Agnes:

"Agnes will be sorry when she hears."

Toward daybreak he turned to Orange, and said quite simply--

"You are different from the rest. You have the priest's element in you;
there is an incessant struggle and toil to cut one another's throat
among us average men--all striving after success. You weren't built that
way. God bless you."

In the morning his father and the near relatives arrived. The women
cried bitterly. The aged peer looked on in stony grief--drinking in his
son's scarred faced and glancing, with despair, from time to time, at
the clock.

"It isn't going, is it?" he asked.

No, it had been checked; the tick disturbed his lordship, but there was
an hour-glass on the table.

"How many hours do they think----?"

"Perhaps ten hours."

When the sand had run down at the conclusion of the first hour, no one
reversed the instrument. But Lady Margaret Sempton, the Earl's sister,
sent a whispered message to the Bishop of Hadley, who was waiting, much
altered by sorrow and anxiety, in the ante-room. Reckage had asked to
see him. He had always liked the good old man, and the rest withdrew
during their short interview.

Meanwhile carriage after carriage drove up to the door; caller after
caller appeared with cards, notes, and inquiries; name after name was
inscribed in the visitors' book; telegrams came from the Royal family,
from all parts of the country and the Continent.

"My poor boy. I didn't know he had so many friends," said his father.
"God forgive me, I used to think he wasted his time on fads."

And odd people came also. Trainers, jockeys, and horse-dealers rubbed
shoulders on the doorsteps with collectors of old furniture,
missionaries, electioneering agents, ladies of the chorus, of the
_corps de ballet_, shabby-genteel individuals of both sexes out of work,
and the like; each had his degree of regret and an anecdote.

"He was always very kind to me," said this one, that one, and the other.

Bradwyn, noting some of these unusual visitors, observed that Reckage
had a knack of pleasing the lower classes and half-educated persons
generally. He heard a Bible-reader say to the footman: "_Take ye heed,
watch and pray; for ye know not when the time is!_"