ess of his aunt, who fainted dead
away.

Sir Hilton sank forward with his chest over the chair-back, and his arms
hanging full length down, and a general aspect of trying to imitate a
gaily-dressed Punch in the front of the show.

Then Lady Tilborough rushed in wildly.

"Where is this man?" she cried, in a passion. "Hilt! Hilt!" Then as
she saw her gentleman-rider's state of utter collapse she uttered a
wild, despairing cry which brought the trainer to his office-door softly
rubbing his hands. "All, all is lost!" cried Lady Tilborough,
tragically.

"Here, stand aside!" shouted the doctor, dashing in with a medical glass
in one hand, and a bottle from the nearest chemist's in the other, the
cork giving forth a squeak as he drew it out with his teeth.

"Now then," he cried, "hold him up. Eh, what?" he added, as Lady
Tilborough caught him by the arm crying--

"Jack Granton, you're a doctor; do something to pick him up, or the
game's all over for us all."

CHAPTER TWENTY.

WHERE THE MOONBEAMS PLAYED.

The lately risen moon, in its third quarter, shone across the well-kept
lawn at the Denes between two great banks of trees, and through the wide
French window in a way that left half the drawing-room in darkness, the
conservatory full of lights and shadows of grotesque-looking giant
plants in pots, and the other half of the handsome salon fairly
illuminated. The shutters had not been closed, and the room door was
wide open, seeming apparently untenanted, or as if the occupants of Sir
Hilton Lisle's residence were all retired to rest.

Everything was still as a rule; but every rule has exceptions, and it
was the case here. For, as if coming faintly from a distance, there was
a continuous, pleasant chirp, such as might have suggested the early
bird about to go in search of the worm; but it was a cricket by the
still warm hearth of the kitchen.

There was, too, the distant barking of a dog, varied by a remarkably
dismal howl such as a dog will utter on moonlight nights if he has not
been fed and furnished with a pleasant padding to dull the points of his
ribs when he indulges in his customary curl and sleep.

But there was another sound which broke the silence at rare intervals--a
strange, bewildering sound in that drawing-room, such as might have been
made by water in a gas pipe. But that was impossible, for there was no
illuminant of the nature nearer than Tilborough, the Denes being lit up
by crysta