enough to move rudely the boy’s light weight, and in a few moments more would have tossed it up and down with every careless wave among the boulders of the glen.  And then it was that Montagu’s horror-stricken gaze had identified the object at which they had been gazing.  In strange foreboding silence they urged on the boat, while Eric at the prow seemed wild with the one intense impulse to verify his horrible suspicion.  The suspicion grew and grew:—­it was a boy lying in the water;—­it was Vernon;—­he was motionless;—­he must have fallen there from the cliff.

Eric could endure the suspense no longer.  The instant that the boat grated on the shingle, he sprang into the water, and rushed to the spot where his brother’s body lay.  With a burst of passionate affection, he flung himself on his knees beside it, and took the cold hand in his own—­the little rigid hand in which the green blades of grass, and fern, and heath, so tightly clutched, were unconscious of the tale they told.

“Oh Verny, Verny, darling Verny, speak to me!” he cried in anguish, as he tenderly lifted up the body, and marked how little blood had flowed.  But the child’s head fell back heavily, and his arms hung motionless beside him, and with a shriek, Eric suddenly caught the look of dead fixity in his blue open eyes.

The others had come up.  “O God, save my brother, save him, save him from death,” cried Eric, “I cannot live without him.  Oh God!  Oh God!  Look! look!” he continued, “he has fallen from the cliff with his head on this cursed stone,” pointing to the block of quartz, still red with blood-stained hair; “but we must get a doctor.  He is not dead! no, no, no, he cannot be dead.  Take him quickly, and let us row home.  Oh God! why did I ever leave him?”

The boys drew round in a frightened circle, and lifted Vernon’s corpse into the boat; and then, while Eric still supported the body, and moaned, and called to him in anguish, and chafed his cold pale brow and white hands, and kept saying that he had fainted and was not dead, the others rowed home with all speed, while a feeling of terrified anxiety lay like frost upon their hearts.

They reached Starhaven, and got into the cart with the lifeless boy, and heard from Wright how the accident had taken place.  Few boys were about the play-ground, so they got unnoticed to Roslyn, and Dr. Underhay, who had been summoned, was instantly in attendance.  He looked at Vernon for a moment, and then shook his head in a way that could not be mistaken.  Eric saw it, and flung himself with uncontrollable agony on his brother’s corpse.  “O Vernon, Vernon, my own dear brother! oh God, then he is dead.”  And, unable to endure the blow, he fainted away.

I cannot dwell on the miserable days that followed, when the very sun in heaven seemed dark to poor Eric’s wounded and crushed spirit.  He hardly knew how they went by.  And when they buried Vernon in the little green churchyard by Russell’s side, and the patter of the earth upon the coffin—­that most terrible of all sounds—­struck his ear, the iron entered into his soul, and he had but one wish as he turned away from the open grave, and that was, soon to lie beside his beloved little brother and to be at rest.