ighty frame was still
and cold and stiff as the ice beneath it. The strong man had fallen
from the saddle on to his head, and, dislocating his neck, had met
with instant death. Close at hand were the marks of the horse's
sliding hoofs. She had cast one of her shoes in the fall, and there it
lay. Her knees, too, were still bleeding.

"Give me the lantern, Willy," said Ralph, going down on his knees to
feel the heart. He had laid his hand on it before, and knew too well
it did not beat. But he opened the cloak and tried once more. Willy
was walking to and fro across the road, not daring to look down. And
in the desolation of that moment the great heart of his brother failed
him too, and he dropped his head over the cold breast beside which he
knelt, and from eyes unused to weep the tears fell hot upon it.

"Take the lantern again, Willy," Ralph said, getting up. Then he
lifted the body on to the back of the mare that stood quietly by their
side.

As he did so a paper slipped away from the breast of the dead man.

Willy picked it up, and seeing "Ralph Ray" written on the back of it,
he handed it to his brother, who thrust it into a pocket unread.

Then the two walked back, their dread burden between them.

CHAPTER VI. THE HOUSE ON THE MOSS.

When the dawn of another day rose over Shoulthwaite, a great silence
had fallen on the old house on the moss. The man who had made it what
it was--the man who had been its vital spirit--slept his last deep
sleep in the bedroom known as the kitchen loft. Throughout forty years
his had been the voice first heard in that mountain home when the
earliest gleams of morning struggled through the deep recesses of the
low mullioned windows. Perhaps on the day following market day he
sometimes lay an hour longer; but his stern rule of life spared none,
and himself least of all. If at sixty his powerful limbs were less
supple than of old, if his Jove-like head with its flowing beard had
become tipped with the hoar frost, he had relaxed nothing of his rigid
self-government on that account. When the clock in the kitchen had
struck ten at night, Angus had risen up, whatever his occupation,
whatever his company, and retired to rest. And the day had hardly
dawned when he was astir in the morning, rousing first the men and
next the women of his household. Every one had waited for his call.
There had been no sound more familiar than that of his firm footstep,
followed by the occasional c