“That’s for my mother’s maid.  She will know what to do.  She is an old servant.  I must stay here.”

Radowitz rushed away, leaping and running down the steep side of the hill, his white shirt, crossed by the black sling, conspicuous all the way, till he was at last lost to sight in the wood leading to the keeper’s cottage.

Falloden went back to the dead man.  He straightened his father’s limbs and closed his eyes.  Then he lay down beside him, throwing his arm tenderly across the body.  And the recollection came back to him of that hunting accident years ago—­the weight of his father on his shoulders—­the bitter cold—­the tears which not all his boyish scorn of tears could stop.

His poor mother!  She must see Radowitz, for Radowitz alone could tell the story of that last half hour.  He must give evidence, too, at the inquest.

Radowitz!  Thoughts, ironic and perverse, ran swarming through Falloden’s brain, as though driven through it from outside.  What a nursery tale!—­how simple!—­how crude!  Could not the gods have devised a subtler retribution?

Then these thoughts vanished again, like a cloud of gnats.  The touch of his father’s still warm body brought him back to the plain, tragic fact.  He raised himself on his elbow to look again at the dead face.

The handsome head with its grizzled hair was resting on Radowitz’s coat.  Falloden could not bear it.  He took off his own, and gently substituted it for the other.  And as he laid the head down, he kissed the hair and the brow.  He was alone with his father—­more alone than he ever would be again.  There was not a human step or voice upon the moor.  Night was coming rapidly on.  The stream rushed beside him.  There were a few cries of birds—­mostly owls from the woods below.  The dead man’s face beside him was very solemn and quiet.  And overhead, the angry sunset clouds were fading into a dim and star-strewn heaven, above a world sinking to its rest.

* * * * *

The moon was up before Radowitz came back to the little rectory on the other side of the moor.  Sorell, from whose mind he was seldom absent, had begun to worry about him, was in fact on the point of setting out in search of him.  But about nine o’clock he heard the front gate open and jumping down from the low open window of the rectory drawing-room he went to meet the truant.

Radowitz staggered towards him, and clung to his arm.

“My dear fellow,” cried Sorell, aghast at the bay’s appearance and manner—­“what have you been doing to yourself?”

“I went up the moor for a walk after tea—­it was so gorgeous, the clouds and the view.  I got drawn on a bit—­on the castle side.  I wasn’t really thinking where I was going.  Then I saw the park below me, and the house.  And immediately afterwards, I heard a groaning sound, and there was a man lying on the ground.  It was Sir Arthur Falloden—­and he died—­while I was there.”  The boy’s golden head dropped suddenly against Sorell.  “I say, can’t I have some food, and go to bed?”