ime
and more selfish than conscience. He was not sorry that Philip Feltram
was out of the way. His lips might begin to babble inconveniently at any
time, and why should not his mouth be stopped? and what stopper so
effectual as that plug of clay which fate had introduced? But he did not
want to be charged with the odium of the catastrophe. Every man cares
something for the opinion of his fellows. And seeing that Feltram had
been well liked, and that his death had excited a vehement
commiseration, Sir Bale did not wish it to be said that he had made the
house too hot to hold him, and had so driven him to extremity.

Sir Bale's first agitation had subsided. It was now late, he had written
many letters, and he was tired. It was not wonderful, then, that having
turned his lounging-chair to the fire, he should have fallen asleep in
it, as at last he did.

The storm was passing gradually away by this time. The thunder was now
echoing among the distant glens and gorges of Daulness Fells, and the
angry roar and gusts of the tempest were subsiding into the melancholy
soughing and piping that soothe like a lullaby.

Sir Bale therefore had his unpremeditated sleep very comfortably, except
that his head was hanging a little uneasily; which, perhaps, helped him
to this dream.

It was one of those dreams in which the continuity of the waking state
that immediately preceded it seems unbroken; for he thought that he was
sitting in the chair which he occupied, and in the room where he
actually was. It seemed to him that he got up, took a candle in his
hand, and went through the passages to the old still-room where Philip
Feltram lay. The house seemed perfectly still. He could hear the chirp
of the crickets faintly from the distant kitchen, and the tick of the
clock sounded loud and hollow along the passage. In the old still-room,
as he opened the door, was no light, except what was admitted from the
candle he carried. He found the body of poor Philip Feltram just as he
had left it--his gentle face, saddened by the touch of death, was turned
upwards, with white lips: with traces of suffering fixed in its
outlines, such as caused Sir Bale, standing by the bed, to draw the
coverlet over the dead man's features, which seemed silently to upbraid
him. "Gone in weakness!" said Sir Bale, repeating the words of the "daft
sir," Hugh Creswell; as he did so, a voice whispered near him, with a
great sigh, "Come in power!" He looked round, in his