red, not only with the cold, but with a premonition of
disaster. For why should Lady Fenimore have sent for me to see Sir
Anthony, when he, strong and hearty, could have sent for me himself,
or, for the matter of that, could have visited me at my own home? The
house looked stark and desolate. And when we drew up at the front door
and Pardoe, the elderly butler, appeared, his face too looked stark and
desolate.

Marigold lifted me out and carried me up the steps and put me into a
chair like my own which the Fenimores have the goodness to keep in a
hall cupboard for my use.

"What's the matter, Pardoe?" I asked.

"Sir Anthony and her ladyship will tell you, sir. They're in the
morning room."

So I was shewn into the morning room--a noble square room with French
windows, looking on to the wintry garden, and with a log fire roaring
up a great chimney. On one side of the fire sat Sir Anthony, and on the
other, Lady Fenimore. And both were crying. He rose as he saw me--a
short, crop-haired, clean-shaven, ruddy, jockey-faced man of
fifty-five, the corners of his thin lips, usually curled up in a cheery
smile, now piteously drawn down, and his bright little eyes now dim
like those of a dead bird. She, buxom, dark, without a grey hair in her
head, a fine woman defying her years, buried her face in her hands and
sobbed afresh.

"It's good of you to come, old man," said Sir Anthony, "but you're in
it with us."

He handed me a telegram. I knew, before reading it, what message it
contained. I had known, all along, but dared not confess it to myself.

"I deeply regret to inform you that your son, Lieutenant Oswald
Fenimore, was killed in action yesterday while leading his men with the
utmost gallantry."

I had known him since he was a child. By reason of my wife's kinship, I
was "Uncle Duncan." He was just one and twenty, but a couple of years
out of Sandhurst. Only a week before I had received an exuberant letter
from him extolling his men as "super-devil-angels," and imploring me if
I loved him and desired to establish the supremacy of British arms, to
send him some of Mrs. Marigold's potted shrimp.

And now, there he was dead; and, if lucky, buried with a little wooden
cross with his name rudely inscribed, marking his grave.

I reached out my hand.

"My poor old Anthony!"

He jerked his head and glance towards his wife and wheeled me to her
side, so that I could put my hand on her shoulder.

"It's bitter hard, Ed