“He is coming, coming.  Hush! that is his step!”

The dark eyes were ablaze with expectation:  the pale cheek aglow with hope.  I bent down over the bed, for her voice was very low.

“He is coming, I know it.  Listen!  Oh, husband, come quicker, quicker!”

Alas! poor saint, the step you listen for has gone before, and is already at the gate of heaven.

“He is here!  Oh, husband, husband, you have come for me!”

A moment she sat up with arms outstretched, and glory in her face; then fell back, and the arms that caught her were the arms of God.

After the first pang of bereavement had spent itself, Uncle Loveday got me to bed, and there at last I slept.  The very bewilderment of so much sorrow enforced sleep, and sleep was needed:  so that, worn out with watching and excitement, I had not so much as a dream to trouble me.  It was ten o’clock in the morning when I awoke, and saw my uncle sitting beside the bed.  Another sun was bright in the heavens outside:  the whole world looked so calm and happy that my first impulse was to leap up and run, as was my custom, to mother’s room.  Then my eyes fell on Uncle Loveday, and the whole dreadful truth came surging into my awakened brain.  I sank back with a low moan upon the pillow.

Uncle Loveday, who had been watching me, stepped to the bed and took my hand.

“Jasper, boy, are you better?”

After a short struggle with my grief, I plucked up heart to answer that I was.

“That’s a brave boy.  I asked, because I have yet to tell you something.  I am a doctor, you know, Jasper, and so you may take my word when I say there is no good in what is called ‘breaking news.’  It is always best to have the pain over and done with; at least, that’s my experience.  Now, my dear boy, though God knows you have sorrow enough, there is still something to tell:  and if you are the boy I take you for, it is best to let you know at once.”

Dimly wondering what new blow fortune could deal me, I sat up in bed and looked at my uncle helplessly.

“Jasper, you think—­do you not—­that your father was drowned?”

“Of course, uncle.”

“He was not drowned.”

“Not drowned!”

“No, Jasper, he was murdered.”

The words came slowly and solemnly, and even with the first shock of surprise the whole truth dawned upon me.  This, then, explained the effect my name had wrought upon those two strange men.  This was the reason why, as we sat together upon Dead Man’s Rock, the eyes of John Railton had refused to meet mine:  this was the reason why his murderer had gripped me so viciously upon Ready-Money Beach.  These few words of my uncle’s began slowly to piece together the scattered puzzle of the last two days, so that I half guessed the answer as I asked—­

“Murdered!  How?”

“He was stabbed to death.”