And so it was.  A telegram from Piers brought down into Yorkshire the solicitor who had for many years been Jerome Otway’s friend and adviser; he answered the young man’s inquiries with full and decisive information.  Mrs. Otway already knew the fact; whence her habitual coldness to Piers, and the silent acerbity with which she behaved to him at this juncture.

“Mrs. Otway,” said Piers to her, on the day of the inquest, “I shall stay for my father’s funeral, and to avoid gossip I still ask your hospitality.  I do it with reluctance, but you will very soon see the last of me.”

“You are of course welcome to stay in the house,” replied the lady.  “There is no need to say that we shall in future be strangers, and I only hope that the example of this shockingly sudden death in the midst of——­”

His blood boiling, Piers left the room before the sentence was finished.

Had he obeyed his conscience, he would have followed the coffin in the clothes he was wearing, for many a time he had heard his father speak with dislike of the black trappings which made a burial hideous; but enforced regard for public opinion, that which makes cowards of good men and hampers the world’s progress, sent him to the outfitter’s, where he was duly disguised.  With the secret tears he shed, there mingled a bitterness at being unable to show respect to his father’s memory in such small matters.  That Jerome Otway should be buried as a son of the Church, to which he had never belonged, was a ground of indignation, but neither in this could any effective protest be made.  Mute in his sorrow, Piers marvelled with a young man’s freshness of feeling at the forms and insincerities which rule the world.  He had a miserable sense of his helplessness amid forces which he despised.

On the day of the inquest arrived Daniel Otway, Piers having telegraphed to the club where he had seen his brother three years ago.  Before leaving London, Daniel had provided himself with solemn black, of the latest cut; Hawes people remarked him with curiosity, saying what a gentleman he looked, but whispering at the same time rumours and doubts; for the little town had long gossiped about Jerome, a man not much to its mind.  A day later came Alexander.  With him there had been no means of communicating, and a newspaper paragraph informed him of his father’s death.  Appearing in rough tweeds, with a felt hat, he inspired more curiosity than respect.  Both brothers greeted Piers cordially; both were curt and formal with the widow, but, for appearances’ sake, accepted a cramped lodging in the cottage.  Piers kept very much to himself until the funeral was over; he was then invited by Daniel to join a conference in what had been his father’s room.  Here the man of law (Jerome’s name for him) expounded the posture of things; with all professional, and some personal, tact and delicacy.  Will there was certainly none; Daniel, in the course of things, would