the bell, turning remoteness into music, full of the pathos of a sad and
infinite patience, died away with an effect unspeakably dreary. His
spirit, drawn forth after the vanishing vibrations, seemed to traverse
waste spaces without beginning or ending, and aeons of monotonous
duration. A sense of utter loneliness--loneliness inevitable, crushing,
eternal, the loneliness of existence, encompassed by the infinite void of
unconsciousness--enfolded him as a pall. Life lay like an incubus on his
bosom. He shuddered at the thought that death might overlook him, and
deny him its refuge. Even Madeline's face, as he conjured it up, seemed
wan and pale, moving to unutterable pity, powerless to cheer, and all the
illusions and passions of love were dim as ball-room candles in the grey
light of dawn.

Gradually the moon passed, and he slept again.

As early as half-past eight the following forenoon, groups of men with
very serious faces were to be seen standing at the corners of the
streets, conversing in hushed tones, and women with awed voices were
talking across the fences which divided adjoining yards. Even the
children, as they went to school, forgot to play, and talked in whispers
together, or lingered near the groups of men to catch a word or two of
their conversation, or, maybe, walked silently along with a puzzled,
solemn look upon their bright faces.

For a tragedy had occurred at dead of night which never had been
paralleled in the history of the village. That morning the sun, as it
peered through the closed shutters of an upper chamber, had relieved the
darkness of a thing it had been afraid of. George Bayley sat there in a
chair, his head sunk on his breast, a small, blue hole in his temple,
whence a drop or two of blood had oozed, quite dead.

This, then, was what he meant when he said that he had made arrangements
for leaving the village. The doctor thought that the fatal shot must have
been fired about three o'clock that morning, and, when Henry heard this,
he knew that it was the breath of the angel of death as he flew by that
had chilled the genial current in his veins.

Bayley's family lived elsewhere, and his father, a stern, cold,
haughty-looking man, was the only relative present at the funeral. When
Mr. Lewis undertook to tell him, for his comfort, that there was reason
to believe that George was out of his head when he took his life, Mr.
Bayley interrupted him.

"Don't say that," he said. "He knew wh