"Is it you, Rane? What is all this trouble? I have been away for a few hours, unfortunately. Mark Dawson met me just now with the news that my brother was dying." The voice would have been pleasing to a degree if only from its tone of ready decision: but it was also musical as voices seldom are, clear and full of sincerity. From the voice alone, Richard North might have been trusted to his life's end. Dr. Rane gave a short summary of the illness and the state he was lying in. "Dawson spoke of a letter that had excited him," said Richard. "True; a letter to Mr. North." "A dastardly anonymous letter. Just so." "An anonymous letter," repeated the doctor. "But the effect on your brother seems altogether disproportioned to the cause." "Where is the letter? I cannot look upon Edmund until I have seen the letter." Dr. Rane told him where the letter was, and went out. Richard North passed on to the parlour. Mr. North, sitting by the fire, had his face bent in his hands. "Father, what is all this?" "Oh, Dick, I am glad you have come!" and in the tone there sounded an intense relief, as if he who came brought with him strength and hope. "I can't make top or tail of this; and I think he is dying." "Who is with him?--Arthur?" "No; Arthur has been out all day. The doctors are with him still." "Let me see the letter." Mr. North gave it him, reciting at the same time the chief incidents of the calamity in a rambling sort of manner. Richard North read the letter twice: once hastily, to gather in the sense; then attentively, giving to every word full consideration. His father watched him. "It was not so much the letter itself that excited him, Richard, as the notion that Alexander wrote it." "Alexander did not write this," decisively spoke Richard. "You think not?" "Why, of course he did not. It tells against himself as much as against Edmund." "Edmund said no one knew of the matter except Alexander, and therefore no one else could have written it. Besides, Dick, where is Alexander? Why is he staying away?" "We shall hear soon, I daresay. I have faith in Alexander. Keep this letter jealously, father. It may have been right to give you the information it contains; I say nothing at present about that; but an anonymous writer is generally a scoundrel, deserving no quarter." "And none shall he get from me," spoke Mr. North, emphatically. "It was posted at Whitborough, you see, Dick." "I see," shortly answered Richard. He threw his coat back as if he were too hot; and moved to the door on his way to his brother's chamber. Meanwhile Oliver Rane went down the avenue to the entrance-gates, and took the road to Dallory. He had to see a patient there: a poor man who was lying in danger. _He_ threw his coat back, in spite of the chilling fog, and wiped his brow, as if the weather or his reflections were too hot for him.