h horse!"

But Arthur had already leaped on the unhappy steed, which had been the
cause of this appalling affliction. "Which way?"

"Straight on to ----, only two miles--every one knows Mr. Powis's house.
God bless you!" said the groom. Arthur vanished.

"Lift him carefully, and take him to the house," said Mr. Robert. "My
poor brother! my dear brother!"

He was interrupted by a cry, a single shrill, heartbreaking cry; and
Philip fell senseless to the ground.

No one heeded him at that hour--no one heeded the fatherless BASTARD.
"Gently, gently," said Mr. Robert, as he followed the servants and their
load. And he then muttered to himself, and his sallow cheek grew bright,
and his breath came short: "He has made no will--he never made a will."

CHAPTER V.

"Constance. O boy, then where art thou?
* * * * What becomes of me"--King John.

It was three days after the death of Philip Beaufort--for the surgeon
arrived only to confirm the judgment of the groom: in the drawing-room
of the cottage, the windows closed, lay the body, in its coffin, the
lid not yet nailed down. There, prostrate on the floor, tearless,
speechless, was the miserable Catherine; poor Sidney, too young to
comprehend all his loss, sobbing at her side; while Philip apart, seated
beside the coffin, gazed abstractedly on that cold rigid face which had
never known one frown for his boyish follies.

In another room, that had been appropriated to the late owner, called
his study, sat Robert Beaufort. Everything in this room spoke of
the deceased. Partially separated from the rest of the house, it
communicated by a winding staircase with a chamber above, to which
Philip had been wont to betake himself whenever he returned late, and
over-exhilarated, from some rural feast crowning a hard day's hunt.
Above a quaint, old-fashioned bureau of Dutch workmanship (which Philip
had picked up at a sale in the earlier years of his marriage) was a
portrait of Catherine taken in the bloom of her youth. On a peg on the
door that led to the staircase, still hung his rough driving coat. The
window commanded the view of the paddock in which the worn-out hunter
or the unbroken colt grazed at will. Around the walls of the "study"--(a
strange misnomer!)--hung prints of celebrated fox-hunts and renowned
steeple-chases: guns, fishing-rods, and foxes' brushes, ranged with a
sportsman's neatness, supplied the place of books. On the mantelpiece
lay a cigar