rty congratulations. Then a telegram was handed
to him.

"No bad news, I hope," said the advocate who had defended, seeing Saxham's
lips blanch. "You have had enough trouble to last for some time, I
imagine?"

"It appears as if my measure was not quite full enough," said Saxham
quietly. "My father died suddenly last night, down at our place in South
Dorset. The wire says, 'An attack of cerebral haemorrhage,' probably
brought on by worry and distress of mind over this damned affair of mine."
He ground his teeth together, and went on: "I must go to my mother without
delay. How soon can I get away from here?"

It was oddly difficult to realise that all the doors were open, and that
the following shadow of the Man In Blue would no longer dog his footsteps.
It was strange to drive home in the brougham of a friend to Chilworth
Street, and let himself into the dusty, neglected, close-smelling, shut-up
house. All the servants were out; probably they had been making holiday
through all the weeks that had preceded the Trial. His man returned as the
master finished packing a portmanteau for that journey down to
Dorsetshire. Saxham left him to finish while he changed his clothes and
scrawled a letter to Mildred. Nothing else but this death could have kept
him from hurrying to the embrace of those dear arms. As it was, he half
expected her to rush in upon him, stammering, weeping, clinging to him in
her overwhelming relief and gladness.... At every rumble and stoppage of
wheels in the street, at every ring, he made sure that she was coming. But
she did not come, and he sent his man to Pont Street with his letter, and
went down into Dorsetshire by special train from Waterloo, and found the
dead man's dogcart waiting for him, with the old bay cob in harness, and
the old coachman who had taught him to ride his pony, waiting, with a band
of crape about his sleeve, and drove through the deep, ferny lanes to the
old home standing in its mantle of midsummer leafage and blossom in the
wide gardens whose myrtle and lavender hedges overhung the beach below.
There was a little, old, bent, white-haired woman in a shabby black gown
and white India shawl waiting for him on the threshold, and only by the
indomitable, unquailing spirit that looked out of her bright black eyes
did Owen Saxham recognise his mother. She called him her David's dearest
son, and her own boy, and took both his hands, and drew his head down, and
kissed him solemnly upon