a pencil, and a letter from his
pocket. He wrote some words on the envelope, and handed it to Radowitz.

"That's for my mother's maid. She will know what to do. She is an old
servant. I must stay here."

Radowitz rushed away, leaping and running down the steep side of the
hill, his white shirt, crossed by the black sling, conspicuous all the
way, till he was at last lost to sight in the wood leading to the
keeper's cottage.

Falloden went back to the dead man. He straightened his father's limbs
and closed his eyes. Then he lay down beside him, throwing his arm
tenderly across the body. And the recollection came back to him of that
hunting accident years ago--the weight of his father on his
shoulders--the bitter cold--the tears which not all his boyish scorn of
tears could stop.

His poor mother! She must see Radowitz, for Radowitz alone could tell
the story of that last half hour. He must give evidence, too, at
the inquest.

_Radowitz_! Thoughts, ironic and perverse, ran swarming through
Falloden's brain, as though driven through it from outside. What a
nursery tale!--how simple!--how crude! Could not the gods have devised a
subtler retribution?

Then these thoughts vanished again, like a cloud of gnats. The touch of
his father's still warm body brought him back to the plain, tragic fact.
He raised himself on his elbow to look again at the dead face.

The handsome head with its grizzled hair was resting on Radowitz's coat.
Falloden could not bear it. He took off his own, and gently substituted
it for the other. And as he laid the head down, he kissed the hair and
the brow. He was alone with his father--more alone than he ever would be
again. There was not a human step or voice upon the moor. Night was
coming rapidly on. The stream rushed beside him. There were a few cries
of birds--mostly owls from the woods below. The dead man's face beside
him was very solemn and quiet. And overhead, the angry sunset clouds
were fading into a dim and star-strewn heaven, above a world sinking
to its rest.

* * * * *

The moon was up before Radowitz came back to the little rectory on the
other side of the moor. Sorell, from whose mind he was seldom absent,
had begun to worry about him, was in fact on the point of setting out in
search of him. But about nine o'clock he heard the front gate open and
jumping down from the low open window of the rectory drawing-room he
went to meet the truant.

R