he had no time
to carry out his kind intentions."

But presently a terrible thought struck him. He rang the bell hastily.
It was answered by the footman, who, since he had an hour before
helped to carry his poor master upstairs, had become quite
demoralized. It was some time before Philip could get an answer to his
question as to whether or no any one had been with his father that day
whilst he was out. At last he succeeded in extracting a reply from the
man that nobody had been except the young lady--"leastways, he begged
pardon, Mrs. Caresfoot, as he was told she was."

"Never mind her," said Philip, feeling as though a load had been taken
from his breast, "you are sure nobody else has been?"

"No, sir, nobody, leastways he begged pardon, nobody except lawyer
Bellamy and his clerk, who had been there all the afternoon writing,
with a black bag, and had sent for Simmons to be witnessed."

"You can go," said Philip, in a quiet voice. He saw it all now, he had
let the old man die _after_ he had executed the fresh will
disinheriting him. He had let him die; he had effectually and beyond
redemption cut his own throat. Doubtless, too, Bellamy had taken the
new will with him; there was no chance of his being able to destroy
it.

By degrees, however, his fit of brooding gave way to one of sullen
fury against his wife, himself, but most of all against his dead
father. Drunk with excitement, rage, and baffled avarice, he seized
and candle and staggered up to the room where the corpse had been
laid, launching imprecations as he went at his dead father's head. But
when he came face to face with that dread Presence his passion died,
and a cold sense of the awful quiet and omnipotence of death came upon
him and chilled him into fear. In some indistinct way he realized how
impotent is the chafing of the waters of Mortality against the iron-
bound coasts of Death. To what purpose did he rail against that solemn
quiet thing, that husk and mask of life which lay in unmoved mockery
of his reviling?

His father was dead, and he, even he, had killed his father. He was
his father's murderer. And then a terror of the reckoning that must
one day be struck between that dead man's spirit and his own took
possession of him, and a foreknowledge of the awful shadow under which
he must henceforth live crept into his mind and froze the very marrow
in his bones. He looked again at the face, and, to his excited
imagination, it appeared to hav