at is the matter?"

"He's in there," returned the butler, who was looking very scared, and
pointing to the library; and the next moment Erle came out with a face
as white as death.

"Oh! uncle, uncle, don't go in till they have told you. Percy is
there, and--" but Mr. Huntingdon only motioned him aside with his old
peremptoriness, and then closed the door upon them.

He knew what he should find there--he knew it when they whispered into
his ear that something had happened; and then he walked feebly across
the room to the couch, where something lay with strange rigid lines
under a satin coverlid that had been flung over it; and as he drew it
down and looked at the face of his dead grandson, he knew that the
hand of death had struck him also, that he would never get over
this--never!

CHAPTER XXXVIII.

NEA AND HER FATHER MEET AGAIN.

Whence art thou sent from us?
Whither thy goal?
How art thou rent from us
Thou that were whole?
As with severing of eyelids and eyes, as with sundering of body and soul.
Who shall raise thee
From the house of the dead?
Or what man shall praise thee,
That thy praise may be said?
Alas thy beauty! alas thy body! alas thy head!
What wilt thou leave me
Now this thing is done?
A man wilt thou give me,
A son for a son,
For the light of my eyes, the desire of my life, the desirable one.

ALGERNON C. SWINBURNE.

Erle had followed him into the room, but Mr. Huntingdon took no notice
of him. If he could, he would have spoken to him and implored him to
leave him, but his tongue seemed to cleave to the roof of his mouth.
He wished to be alone with his grandson, to hide from every one, if he
could, that he was stricken down at last.

He had loved him, but not as he had loved Erle--the Benjamin of his
old age; his son of consolation. He had been stern with him, and had
never sought to win his confidence; and now the blood of the unhappy
boy seemed crying to him from the ground. And it was for this that he
had taken him from his mother, that he should lie there in the prime
of his youth with all the measure of his sins filled to the brim. How
had he died--but he dared not ask, and no one told him. Erle had
indeed said something about a child; but he h