again
he went for his walk, and did not return. When his absence became
alarming, messengers were sent to look for him, and by one of these he
was found lying on the moorside, dead. The postmortem showed that the
blow he had received affected the heart, which was already diseased (he
did not know that). Of course the man who struck him cannot be
discovered, and I don't know that it matters. My father would no doubt
have been glad to foresee such a death as this. It was sudden (for that
he always hoped), and it came of a protest against the thing he most
hated, brutal violence."

So Piers Otway wrote in a letter to John Jacks. He did not add that his
father had died intestate, but of that he was aware before any
inquiries had been set on foot; in one of their last talks, Jerome had
expressly told his son that he would shortly make a will, not having
hitherto been able to decide how his possessions should be distributed.
This intestacy meant (if Daniel Otway had spoken truth) that Piers
would have no fruit whatever of his father's promises; that his recent
hopes and schemes would straightway fall to the ground.

And so it was. A telegram from Piers brought down into Yorkshire the
solicitor who had for many years been Jerome Otway's friend and
adviser; he answered the young man's inquiries with full and decisive
information. Mrs. Otway already knew the fact; whence her habitual
coldness to Piers, and the silent acerbity with which she behaved to
him at this juncture.

"Mrs. Otway," said Piers to her, on the day of the inquest, "I shall
stay for my father's funeral, and to avoid gossip I still ask your
hospitality. I do it with reluctance, but you will very soon see the
last of me."

"You are of course welcome to stay in the house," replied the lady.
"There is no need to say that we shall in future be strangers, and I
only hope that the example of this shockingly sudden death in the midst
of----"

His blood boiling, Piers left the room before the sentence was finished.

Had he obeyed his conscience, he would have followed the coffin in the
clothes he was wearing, for many a time he had heard his father speak
with dislike of the black trappings which made a burial hideous; but
enforced regard for public opinion, that which makes cowards of good
men and hampers the world's progress, sent him to the outfitter's,
where he was duly disguised. With the secret tears he shed, there
mingled a bitterness at being unable to s