As the four men, walking in awe and sorrow, cast the light of a lamp through the bushes, they heard a quick rustle of underwood, and crackle of the dead twigs, but saw no one moving. “Some one has been here since I left”, exclaimed John Rosedew, trembling; “some one has lain beside the body, and put marks of blood on the forehead”. Each of the men knew, of course, what it was—Cradock embracing his brother! “A good job you took the gun away; wonder you had the sense, though”, said Rufus Hutton, sharply, to pretend he wasnʼt crying; “I only know what I should have done, if I had shot my brother so—blown out the remains of my brains, sir”! “Hush”! said John Rosedew, solemnly, and his deep voice made their hearts thrill; “it is not our own life to will or to do with. In the hands of the Lord are our life and our death”. They knelt around the pale corpse tenderly, shading the lamp from the eyes of it; even Rufus could not handle it in a medical manner. One of the men, who always declared that he had saved Claytonʼs life in his childhood, fell flat on the ground, and sobbed fearfully. I cannot dwell on it any more; it makes a fellow cry to think of it. Only, thank God, that I am not bound to tell how they met his father. CHAPTER XXII. Mark Stote, the head–gamekeeper on the Nowelhurst estate, was a true and honest specimen of the West Saxon peasant—slow, tenacious, and dogged, faithful and affectionate, with too much deference, perhaps, to all who seemed “his betters”. He was now about fifty years old, but sturdy and active as ever, with a weather–beaten face and eyes always in quest of something. His home was a lonely cottage in one of the plantations, and there he had a tidy and very intelligent wife, and a host of little anxieties. His children, the sparrow–hawks, the weasels, the young fellows who “called theirselves under–keepers, and all they kept was theirselves, sir”,—what with these troubles, and (worst, perhaps, of all) that nest of charcoal–burners by the bustle–headed oak, with Black Will at the head of them, sometimes, Mark Stote would assure us, his head was gone “all wivvery[1] like”, and he could get no sleep of night–time. A mizzly, drizzly rain set in before the poor people got home that evening with the body of Clayton Nowell. Long mournful soughs of wind ensued, the boughs of the trees went heavily, and it blew half a gale before morning; but it takes a real storm to penetrate some parts of the forest. Once, however, let the storm get in, and it makes the most of the opportunity, raging with triple fury, as a lion does in a compound—the rage of the imperious blast, when it finds no exit.