from suspecting as of
comprehending. In the utter silence of the house they could hear the
distant stable-clock strike eleven. The wind was rising, and blew in
fitful gusts, rustling the branches of the trees, and causing a loose
rose-branch to tap carelessly against the window panes. It sounded like
the knock of someone anxious to come in. The candles flickered and
guttered in the draught; the wavering light cast strange shadows over
the dead man's face. You might have thought that his features moved from
time to time; that now he frowned at the intruders, and now he smiled at
them--a terrible, ghastly smile.

There was a footstep at the door. It was Mrs. Luttrell who came gliding
in with her pale face, and her long black robes, to take her place at
her dead son's side. She had thought that she must come and assure
herself once more that he was really gone from her. She meant to look at
him for a little while, to kiss his cold forehead, and then to go back
to Angela and try to sleep. She took no notice of Brian, nor of Hugo;
she drew a chair close to the long table upon which the still, white
form was stretched, seated herself, and looked steadfastly at the
uncovered face. Brian started at the sight of his mother; he glanced at
her pleadingly, as if he would have spoken; but the rigidity of her face
repelled him. He hung his head and turned a little from her, as though
to steal away.

Suddenly a terrible voice rang through the room. "Look!" cried the
mother, pointing with one finger to the lifeless form, and raising her
eyes for the first time to Brian's face--"look there!"

Brian looked, and flinched from the sight he saw. For a strange thing
had happened. Although not actually unusual, it had never before come
within the experience of any of these watchers of the dead, and thus it
suggested to them nothing but the old superstition which in old times
caused a supposed murderer to be brought face to face with the man he
was accused of having killed.

A drop of blood was trickling from the nostril of the dead man, and
losing itself in the thick, black moustache upon his upper lip. It was
followed by another or two, and then it stayed.

The mother did not speak again. Her hand sank; her eyes were riveted
upon Brian's face with a mute reproach. And Brian, although he knew well
enough in his sober senses that the phenomenon they had just seen was
merely caused by the breaking of some small blood-vessel in the brain,