“_Only_ son!”--Every one recoiled. The worn-out brain had certainly given way. Mary and Eulalie exchanged frightened glances. Agatha alone, touched by the unexpected tribute to her husband, did not notice the one momentous word. “Now, Squire, that's hardly fair,” cried Mr. Grimes, bursting into a hoarse vinous laugh. “A man may go wrong sometimes, but to be thrown overboard for it, and by one's father, too--think better of it, old fellow. And ladies by way of an antidote, allow me to give a toast--Success to my worthy and honourable--_exceedingly_ honourable client, Major Frederick Harper.” The old Squire leaped up in his chair, with eyes starting from their sockets. His lips gurgled out some inarticulate sound scarcely human; his right arm shook and quivered with his vain efforts to raise it; still it hung nerveless by his side. Consciousness and will yet lingered in his brain, but physical life and speech had gone for ever. He fell down struck by that living death--that worse than death, of old age--paralysis. CHAPTER XXIII. The whole household was in terror and disorder. Eulalie had rushed screaming from the room--Mary went about, trembling like a leaf, trying to get restoratives--Agatha knelt on the floor, supporting the old man's head in her lap, speaking to him sometimes, as by the motion and apparent intelligence of his eyes she fancied he might possibly understand her. “Oh, he is dead, he is dead!” cried Mary, as she took up the senseless hand, and let it fall again with a burst of tears. “No, he is not dead--he hears you;--take care,” said Agatha, putting the frightened daughter aside with a firmness which rose in her, as in similar characters it does rise, equal to the necessity. She looked on the trembling Mary--on the servants gathering round with silent horror, and saw there were none who, so to speak, “had their wits about them,” except herself. Scarcely knowing how she did it, she instinctively assumed the rule. She, the young girl of nineteen, who had never till then been placed in any position of trial. “Send all these people away. Quick Mary! Bring some one who can carry him to his room. And--stay, Eulalie, sit down there and be quiet. Don't let any one go and alarm Elizabeth.” She gave these orders and everybody listened and obeyed; people are so ready to obey any guiding spirit at such a crisis. Then she bent down again over the poor corpselike figure that rested against her knee, kissed the old man's forehead, and tried to comfort him. She had heard of cases, when though deprived of speech and motion, the sufferer was still conscious of all passing around him. Therefore she wished as soon as possible to remove her father-in-law out of the way of the terrified household.