itated voices and steps in the
passage--then Benham appeared.

"Sir Jeremy is worse, Mr. Henry. The doctor thinks that, perhaps----"

Harry hurriedly left the room. Absolute silence reigned. The sudden
arrival of the long-expected crisis was terrifying. They sat like
statues, staring in front of them, and listening eagerly to every
sound. The monotonous ticking of the clock on the mantelpiece was
terrifying--the clock on the wall by the door seemed to run a race.
The "tick-tock" grew faster and faster--at last it was as if both
clocks were screaming aloud.

The room was filled with the clamour, and through it all they sat
motionless and silent.

In a moment Harry had returned. "All of you," he said quickly--"he
would like to see you--I am afraid----"

After that Robin was confused and saw nothing clearly. As he crept
tremblingly up the stairs everything assumed gigantic and menacing
shapes--the clock, the pot-pourri bowls, the window-curtains, and the
brass rods on the stairs. In the room there was that grey half-light
that seemed so terrible, and the spurt and crackle of the fire seemed
to fill the place with sounds. He scarcely saw his grandfather. In
the centre of the bed, something was lying; the eyes gleamed for a
moment in the light of the fire, the lips seemed to move. But he did
not realise that those things were his grandfather whom he had known
for so many years--in another hour he would be dead.

But the things that he saw were the shadows of the fire on the wall,
the dancing in the air of the only lock of hair that Dr. Brady
possessed, the way that Clare's hands were folded as she stood silently
by the bed, Uncle Garrett's waistcoat-buttons that shot little sparks
of light into the room as he turned, ever so slightly, from side to
side.

At a motion of the doctor's, he came forward to bid Sir Jeremy
farewell. As he bent over the bed panic seized him--he did not see Sir
Jeremy but something horrible, terrible, ghoulish--Death. Then he saw
the old man's eyes, and they were twinkling; then he knew that he was
speaking to him. The words came with difficulty, but they were quite
clear--

"You'll be a good man, Robin--but listen to your father--he
knows--he'll show you how to be a Trojan."

For a moment he held the wrinkled, shrivelled hand in his own, and then
he stepped back. Clare bent down and kissed her father, and then
kneeled down by the bed; Robin had a mad longing to laugh as he