Falling into a troubled reverie, he beheld the well-known houses, and the great trees under whose shadow he had grown from youth to manhood, flit by him like phantoms in a dream.  But suddenly one house and one place drew his attention with a force that startled him again into an erect attitude, and seizing with one hand the arm of the driver, he pointed with the other at the door of the cottage they were passing, saying in choked tones: 

“See! see!  Something dreadful has happened since we passed by here this morning.  That is crape, Samuel, crape, hanging from the doorpost yonder!”

“Yes, it is crape,” answered the driver, jumping out and running up the path to look.  “Philemon must be dead; the good Philemon.”

Here was a fresh blow.  Mr. Sutherland bowed before it for a moment, then he rose hurriedly and stepped down into the road beside the driver.

“Get in again,” said he, “and drive on.  Ride a half-mile, then come back for me.  I must see the widow Jones.”

The driver, awed both by the occasion and the feeling it had called up in Mr. Sutherland, did as he was bid and drove away.  Mr. Sutherland, with a glance back at the road lie had just traversed, walked painfully up the path to Mrs. Jones’s door.

A moment’s conversation with the woman who answered his summons proved the driver’s supposition to be correct.  Philemon had passed away.  He had never rallied from the shock he had received.  He had joined his beloved Agatha on the day of her burial, and the long tragedy of their mutual life was over.

“It is a mercy that no inheritor of their misfortune remains,” quoth the good woman, as she saw the affliction her tidings caused in this much-revered friend.

The assent Mr. Sutherland gave was mechanical.  He was anxiously studying the road leading toward Portchester.

Suddenly he stepped hastily into the house.

“Will you be so good as to let me sit down in your parlour for a few minutes?” he asked.  “I should like to rest there for an instant alone.  This final blow has upset me.”

The good woman bowed.  Mr. Sutherland’s word was law in that town.  She did not even dare to protest against the alone which he had so pointedly emphasised, but left him after making him, as she said, comfortable, and went back to her duties in the room above.

It was fortunate she was so amenable to his wishes, for no sooner had her steps ceased to be heard than Mr. Sutherland rose from the easy-chair in which he had been seated, and, putting out the lamp widow Jones had insisted on lighting, passed directly to the window, through which he began to peer with looks of the deepest anxiety.

A man was coming up the road, a young man, Frederick.  As Mr. Sutherland recognised him he leaned forward with increased anxiety, till at the appearance of his son in front his scrutiny grew so strained and penetrating that it seemed to exercise a magnetic influence upon Frederick, causing him to look up.