nue as they were at Brockhurst.

"Give peace in my time, oh Lord!" he said. Then he wrapped up the
little bundle carefully, sealed and labelled it, and locked it away in
one of the table-drawers.

Thus, kneeling before the image of the stricken Mother and the dead
Christ, did Julius March behold the Vision of the New Life. But the
page of his diary, on which surely a matter of so great importance
should have been duly chronicled, remains to this day a blank.

CHAPTER VI

ACCIDENT OR DESTINY, ACCORDING TO YOUR HUMOUR

On the 18th of October that year, St. Luke's day, a man died, and this
was the manner of his passing.

There was nothing more to be done. Dr. Knott had gone out of the red
drawing-room on the ground floor into the tapestry-hung dining-room
next door, which struck cold as the small hours drew on towards the
dawn. And Julius March, after reciting the prayer in which the Anglican
Church commends the souls of her departing children to the merciful
keeping of the God who gave them, had followed him. The doctor was
acutely distressed. He hated to lose a patient. He also hated to feel
emotion. It made him angry. Moreover, he was intolerant of the presence
of the clergy and of their ministrations in sick rooms. He greeted poor
Julius rather snarlingly.

"So your work's through as well as mine," he said. "No disrespect to
your cloth, Mr. March, but I'm not altogether sorry. I dare say I'm a
bit of a heathen; but I can't help fancying the dying know more of
death and the way to meet it, than any of us can teach them."

A group of men-servants stood about the open door, at the further end
of the room, with Iles, the steward, and Mr. Tom Chifney, the trainer
from the racing stables. The latter advanced a little and, clearing his
throat, inquired huskily--

"No hope at all, doctor?"

"Hope?" he returned impatiently.--The lamp on the great bare
dining-table burned low, and John Knott's wide mouth, conical skull and
thick, ungainly person looked ogreish, almost brutal in the uncertain
light.--"There never was a grain of hope from the first, except in Sir
Richard's fine constitution. He is as sound as only a clean-living man
of thirty can be.--I wish there were a few more like him, though your
beastly diseases do put money into my pocket.--That offered us a bare
chance, and we were bound to act on that chance"--his loose lips worked
into a bitterly humorous smile--"and torture him. Well, I've seen a
go