eadlong into the hall, and his silk hat could be heard
hopping towards the staircase.

'Pa! 'Milly protested, shocked.

John sprang up, fuming, turned the gas on to the full, and rushed back
to the doorway.

'Ah!' he shouted. 'I knew it was a tramp lying there. Get up. Is the
beggar asleep?'

They all bent down, startled into gravity, to examine a form which lay
in the portico, nearly parallel with the step and below it.

'It's Uncle Meshach,' said Ethel. 'Oh! mother!'

'Then my aunt's had another attack,' cried John, 'and he's come up to
tell us, and--Milly, run for Carpenter.'

It seemed to Leonora, as with sudden awe she vaguely figured an august
and capricious power which conferred experience on mortals like a
wonderful gift, that that bestowing hand was never more full than when
it had given most.

CHAPTER IX

A DEATH IN THE FAMILY

While Prince, tethered summarily outside the stable-door with all his
harness on, was trying in vain to understand this singular caprice on
the part of Carpenter, Carpenter and the head of the house lifted Uncle
Meshach's form and carried it into the hall. The women watched, ceasing
their wild useless questions.

'Into the breakfast-room, on the sofa,' said John, breathing hard, to
the man.

'No, no,' Leonora intervened, 'you had better take him upstairs at once,
to Ethel and Milly's bedroom.'

The procession, undignified and yet impressive, came to a halt, and
Carpenter, who was holding Meshach's feet, glanced with canine anxiety
from his master to his mistress.

'But look here, Nora,' John began.

'Yes, father, upstairs,' said Rose, cutting him short.

Preoccupied with the cumbrous weight of Meshach's shoulders, John could
not maintain the discussion; he hesitated, and then Carpenter moved
towards the stairs. The small dangling body seemed to say: 'I am
indifferent, but it is perhaps as well that you have done arguing.'

'Run over to Dr. Hawley's, and ask him to come across at _once_, John
instructed Carpenter, when they had steered Uncle Meshach round the
twist of the staircase, and insinuated him through a doorway, and laid
him at length, in his overcoat and his muffler and his quaint boots, on
Ethel's virginal bed.

'But has the doctor come home, Jack?' Leonora inquired.

'Of course he has,' said John. 'He drove up with Dain, and they passed
us at Shawport. Didn't you hear me call out to them?'

'Oh yes,' she agreed.

Then John, hatless but in h