So the invalid was left to his quietude.

In the morning it was rumored here and there in the street that the Judge was dead.  A servant was sent from the house three doors away, by Counsellor Traverse, to inquire at Judge Harbottle’s hall door.

The servant who opened it was pale and reserved, and would only say that the Judge was ill.  He had had a dangerous accident; Doctor Hedstone had been with him at seven o’clock in the morning.

There were averted looks, short answers, pale and frowning faces, and all the usual signs that there was a secret that sat heavily upon their minds and the time for disclosing which had not yet come.  That time would arrive when the coroner had arrived, and the mortal scandal that had befallen the house could be no longer hidden.  For that morning Mr. Justice Harbottle had been found hanging by the neck from the banister at the top of the great staircase, and quite dead.

There was not the smallest sign of any struggle or resistance.  There had not been heard a cry or any other noise in the slightest degree indicative of violence.  There was medical evidence to show that, in his atrabilious state, it was quite on the cards that he might have made away with himself.  The jury found accordingly that it was a case of suicide.  But to those who were acquainted with the strange story which Judge Harbottle had related to at least two persons, the fact that the catastrophe occurred on the morning of March 10th seemed a startling coincidence.

A few days after, the pomp of a great funeral attended him to the grave; and so, in the language of Scripture, “the rich man died, and was buried.”