a miniature shrubbery, she heard a second
shot, which seemed to be fired there-from. The man staggered, and
stumbled and fell. Immediately afterwards, her brother--she recognized
his voice raised in anger--ran out of the house, followed by some of the
male guests. Terrified by the sight and the sound of the shots, Lady
Agnes huddled on her dressing-gown hastily, and thrust her bare feet
into slippers. The next moment she was out of her bedroom and down the
stairs. A wild idea had entered her mind that perhaps Lambert had come
secretly to The Manor, and had been shot by Garvington in mistake for a
burglar. The corridors and the hall were filled with guests more or less
lightly attired, mostly women, white-faced and startled. Agnes paid no
attention to their shrieks, but hurried into the side passage which
terminated at the door out of which her brother had left the house. She
went outside also and made for the group round the fallen man.

"What is it? who is it?" she asked, gasping with the hurry and the
fright.

"Go back, Agnes, go back," cried Garvington, looking up with a distorted
face, strangely pale in the moonlight.

"But who is it? who has been killed?" She caught sight of the fallen
man's countenance and shrieked. "Great heavens! it is Hubert; is he
dead?"

"Yes," said Silver, who stood at her elbow. "Shot through the heart."

CHAPTER IX.

AFTERWARDS.

With amazing and sinister rapidity the news spread that a burglar had
been shot dead while trying to raid The Manor. First, the Garvington
villagers learned it; then it became the common property of the
neighborhood, until it finally reached the nearest county town, and thus
brought the police on the scene. Lord Garvington was not pleased when
the local inspector arrived, and intimated as much in a somewhat
unpleasant fashion. He was never a man who spared those in an inferior
social position.

"It is no use your coming over, Darby," he said bluntly to the
red-haired police officer, who was of Irish extraction. "I have sent to
Scotland Yard."

"All in good time, my lord," replied the inspector coolly. "As the
murder has taken place in my district I have to look into the matter,
and report to the London authorities, if it should be necessary."

"What right have you to class the affair as a murder?" inquired
Garvington.

"I only go by the rumors I have heard, my lord. Some say that you winged
the man and broke his right arm. Others tell me tha