from Willey Water into one of the pits.

'Some more--we shall have to run off the lake,' said Gerald.

'Will you?' The faint voice filtered to extinction. There was dead
stillness. The grey-faced, sick man lay with eyes closed, more dead
than death. Gerald looked away. He felt his heart was seared, it would
perish if this went on much longer.

Suddenly he heard a strange noise. Turning round, he saw his father's
eyes wide open, strained and rolling in a frenzy of inhuman struggling.
Gerald started to his feet, and stood transfixed in horror.

'Wha-a-ah-h-h-' came a horrible choking rattle from his father's
throat, the fearful, frenzied eye, rolling awfully in its wild
fruitless search for help, passed blindly over Gerald, then up came the
dark blood and mess pumping over the face of the agonised being. The
tense body relaxed, the head fell aside, down the pillow.

Gerald stood transfixed, his soul echoing in horror. He would move, but
he could not. He could not move his limbs. His brain seemed to re-echo,
like a pulse.

The nurse in white softly entered. She glanced at Gerald, then at the
bed.

'Ah!' came her soft whimpering cry, and she hurried forward to the dead
man. 'Ah-h!' came the slight sound of her agitated distress, as she
stood bending over the bedside. Then she recovered, turned, and came
for towel and sponge. She was wiping the dead face carefully, and
murmuring, almost whimpering, very softly: 'Poor Mr Crich!--Poor Mr
Crich! Poor Mr Crich!'

'Is he dead?' clanged Gerald's sharp voice.

'Oh yes, he's gone,' replied the soft, moaning voice of the nurse, as
she looked up at Gerald's face. She was young and beautiful and
quivering. A strange sort of grin went over Gerald's face, over the
horror. And he walked out of the room.

He was going to tell his mother. On the landing he met his brother
Basil.

'He's gone, Basil,' he said, scarcely able to subdue his voice, not to
let an unconscious, frightening exultation sound through.

'What?' cried Basil, going pale.

Gerald nodded. Then he went on to his mother's room.

She was sitting in her purple gown, sewing, very slowly sewing, putting
in a stitch then another stitch. She looked up at Gerald with her blue
undaunted eyes.

'Father's gone,' he said.

'He's dead? Who says so?'

'Oh, you know, mother, if you see him.'

She put her sewing down, and slowly rose.

'Are you going to see him?' he asked.

'Yes,' she said

By the bedside the