been sounding tremendous in his ears,—_Where is thy brother? What hast thou done? The voice of thy brother’s blood crieth unto me from the ground._ Unhappy man! well might his heart have been heavy, when men expected it to be lightest! Well might his countenance darken, and his soul shudder within him, under the mortal throes of a guilty conscience! From his father’s splendid banqueting table he had been driven by remorse and horror; for his companions, unconscious that they were stabbing to the heart one who was present, WOULD TALK of duelling, and of one sanguinary duel in particular, that bore a ghastly resemblance to his own. Such poor amends as might be in his power to make, he had striven to offer to the miserable family whom he had bereaved, beggared, and desolated, to vindicate an honour which had never been for one instant really questioned, or compromised; and if it _had_ been tarnished, could BLOOD cleanse and brighten it? All the money that he could ordinarily obtain from the Earl, had from time to time been furnished by Lord Alkmond to the family of his victim. For them it was that he had importuned his father for a sum of money sufficient to make for them an ample and permanent provision. Only the day before that on which he had quitted London, to partake of the Christmas festivities, had he written an earnest letter to the person abroad with whom he had long communicated on the subject, assuring him that within a few weeks an ample and satisfactory final arrangement should be made. And he had resolved to make a last strenuous effort with the Earl; but whom, nevertheless, he dared not, except as a matter of dire necessity, tell the nature of his exigency. And why dared not the son tell his father? And why had that father shrunk, blighted, from the mention, by Captain Lutteridge and Mr Hylton, of the conversation which had driven his son out into the solitude where he was slain? Alas! it opened to Lord Milverstoke himself a very frightful retrospect; through the vista of years his anguished, terror-stricken eye settled upon a crimsoned gloom— “Oh, Lord Milverstoke!—and then would echo in thy ears, also, those appalling sounds,—_what hast_ THOU _done_? “For THY—Honour! also, had been dyed in blood!”