vailed not. Forlorn
and peaceful lay the features of poor Philip Feltram; cold and dull to
the touch; no breath through the blue lips; no sight in the fish-like
eyes; pulseless and cold in the midst of all the hot bricks and
warming-pans about him.

At length, everything having been tried, Sir Bale, who had been
directing, placed his hand within the clothes, and laid it silently on
Philip's shoulder and over his heart; and after a little wait, he shook
his head, and looking down on his sunken face, he said,

"I am afraid he's gone. Yes, he's gone, poor fellow! And bear you this
in mind, all of you; Mrs. Julaper there can tell you more about it. She
knows that it was certainly in no compliance with my wish that he left
the house to-night: it was his own obstinate perversity, and perhaps--I
forgive him for it--a wish in his unreasonable resentment to throw some
blame upon this house, as having refused him shelter on such a night;
than which imputation nothing can be more utterly false. Mrs. Julaper
there knows how welcome he was to stay the night; but he would not; he
had made up his mind, it seems, without telling any person. Had he told
you, Mrs. Julaper?"

"No, sir," sobbed Mrs. Julaper from the centre of a pocket-handkerchief
in which her face was buried.

"Not a human being: an angry whim of his own. Poor Feltram! and here's
the result," said the Baronet. "We have done our best--done everything.
I don't think the doctor, when he comes, will say that anything has been
omitted; but all won't do. Does any one here know how it happened?"

Two men knew very well--the man who had been ducked, and his companion,
a younger man, who was also in the still-room, and had lent a hand in
carrying Feltram up to the house.

Tom Marlin had a queer old stone tenement by the edge of the lake just
under Mardykes Hall. Some people said it was the stump of an old tower
that had once belonged to Mardykes Castle, of which in the modern
building scarcely a relic was discoverable.

This Tom Marlin had an ancient right of fishing in the lake, where he
caught pike enough for all Golden Friars; and keeping a couple of boats,
he made money beside by ferrying passengers over now and then. This
fellow, with a furrowed face and shaggy eyebrows, bald at top, but with
long grizzled locks falling upon his shoulders, said,

"He wer wi' me this mornin', sayin' he'd want t' boat to cross the lake
in, but he didn't say what hour; and when it came