o, but the hideous old miser only sneered at
him.

At last, in desperation, he told Kate, and the brother and sister went
together to Bray's house. They reached it just as the wedding was about
to begin.

Ralph Nickleby, who was there, foamed with fury to find the nephew he so
hated again stepping between him and his evil designs. He tried to bar
them out, but Nicholas forced him back.

They would doubtless have come to blows, but at that moment there came
from another room the sound of a fall, and a scream from Madeline. The
excitement had proved too much for her father. His heart had failed and
he had fallen dead on the floor. Thus Providence interfered to bring the
wicked scheme of the marriage to naught.

Vainly did Gride bemoan the loss of the money he had hoped to gain, and
vainly did Ralph Nickleby, with curses, try to prevent. Nicholas thrust
them both aside, lifted the unconscious Madeline as easily as if she had
been a baby, placed her with Kate in a coach and, daring Ralph to
follow; jumped up beside the coachman and bade him drive away.

He took her to his own home, where his mother and Kate cared for her
tenderly till she had recovered from the shock and was her own lovely
self again.

The penalty that he had so long deserved was soon to overtake Ralph
Nickleby. He lost much of his wealth through a failure, and close on the
heels of this misfortune came the news that the infamous plot he had
formed against Smike had been discovered and that Squeers, his
accomplice, had been arrested.

The most terrible blow came last. A man whom Ralph had long ago ruined
and had caused to be transported for a crime, confessed that he had
been the one who, many years before, had left Smike at Dotheboys Hall,
and he confessed also that Smike was really Ralph Nickleby's own son by
a secret marriage. Ralph had not known this, because the man, in
revenge, had falsely told him the child was dead.

The knowledge that, in Smike, he had been persecuting his own son was
the crowning blow for cruel Ralph Nickleby. When he heard this he locked
himself up alone in his great house and never was seen alive again. His
body was found in the garret where he had hanged himself to a rafter.

Poor Smike, however, did not live to sorrow over the villainy of his
father. The exposure and hardships of his years at Squeers's school had
broken his health. He had for long been gradually growing weaker, and at
last one day he died peacefully