r knew, he glanced
towards the place where Edward Cossey stood, and saw that his face was
streaming with blood and that his right arm hung helpless by his side.
Even as he looked, he saw him put his uninjured hand to his head, and,
without a word or a sound, sink down on the gravel path.

For a second there was silence, and the blue smoke from the gun hung
heavily upon the damp autumn air. In the midst of it stood Belle Quest
like one transfixed, her lips apart, her blue eyes opened wide, and
the stamp of terror--or was it guilt?--upon her pallid face.

All this he saw in a flash, and then ran to the bleeding heap upon the
gravel.

He reached it almost simultaneously with Mr. Quest, and together they
turned the body over. But still Belle stood there enveloped in the
heavy smoke.

Presently, however, her trance left her and she ran up, flung herself
upon her knees, and looked at her former lover, whose face and head
were now a mass of blood.

"He is dead," she wailed; "he is dead, and I have killed him! Oh,
Edward! Edward!"

Mr. Quest turned on her savagely; so savagely that one might almost
have thought he feared lest in her agony she should say something
further.

"Stop that," he said, seizing her arm, "and go for the doctor, for if
he is not dead he will soon bleed to death."

With an effort she rose, put her hand to her forehead, and then ran
like the wind down the garden and through the little door.

CHAPTER XXX

HAROLD TAKES THE NEWS

Mr. Quest and Harold bore the bleeding man--whether he was senseless
or dead they knew not--into the house and laid him on the sofa. Then,
having despatched a servant to seek a second doctor in case the one
already gone for was out, they set to work to cut the clothes from his
neck and arm, and do what they could, and that was little enough,
towards staunching the bleeding. It soon, however, became evident that
Cossey had only got the outside portion of the charge of No. 7 that is
to say, he had been struck by about a hundred pellets of the three or
four hundred which would go to the ordinary ounce and an eighth. Had
he received the whole charge he must, at that distance, have been
instantly killed. As it was, the point of the shoulder was riddled,
and so to a somewhat smaller extent was the back of his neck and the
region of the right ear. One or two outside pellets had also struck
the head higher up, and the ski