Pinfold had brought to his master in the library the letter-bag of the Manor, upon which was a brass plate with the inscription, “Cuthbert Piercey Manwaring, Esquire, Holmcastle Manor,” and the arms of the Manwarings--to wit, “On a field argent, a chevronel gules, with three martlets sable,” and he had laid it on the accustomed table, but going in shortly afterwards, he found the Squire prostrate on the floor, and insensible, but clutching in his right hand the fatal letter which told him of the death of his banished son. Evelyn, his much-tried, much-enduring daughter, was speedily at her father’s side, and caused him to be removed to bed, and the Rector and the Doctor, summoned in haste, were speedily in attendance. After the application of various remedies, the old Squire gradually recovered consciousness, and then the bystanders discovered to their horror that the sufferer was almost entirely deprived of speech, and that it was evident his hours in this world were numbered. Several times he tried to speak, but in vain, and then, at length, those around him with difficulty recognised the words, “The Tree! the Tree!” Upon this they brought to him the emblazoned Pedigree on which he had expended so much thought and labour, and on account of which, a mere toy and bauble, he had neglected his duty to God and man. They opened it out before him, like those who display a picture to a child. The Squire, however, regarded the early part of it with a stony stare. When they exposed to view the lowest portion, the old man seemed to rally his failing powers, and putting out his trembling right hand, he scrabbled feebly at a blank space close to the lowest margin. “A p-p-pen,” at last he gibbered out; and then they understood, or at all events thought they understood, that he wanted to restore to its original place the name of his drowned son. They brought him a pen, and he clutched it eagerly in his palsied hand, but it was too late. The old man uttered one despairing cry, and then fell back--_dead_. Thus, with a grievous wrong unrepaired, unconsoled by the last solemn rites of the Church in which he had been baptised, weighed down by the sense of a great crime, “unhouseled, unannealed,” the erewhile proud soul of Cuthbert Piercey Manwaring passed away to its “own place” in the Shadowland of Futurity, the mysterious Intermediate State or Place of Hades. What availed it then the “Family” in whose supposed behalf It had been wrecked? What profited It the coat of sixty quarterings, the long-dead Knights of high degree, the men of worship in Church and State? “Let the Dead bury their dead,” but let the Living occupy themselves, so long as Life remains, with works of love to those that are alive. CHAPTER XIV. MR. TRESHAM POTTS.