self-preservation grew each moment more fierce. The efforts of Oswald, even in this prostrate position, continued for a time as frantic as ever. When, suddenly, all became still: the hands had relaxed their hold, and Henry gazed in mute horror and unavailing remorse on a passive—nay, a lifeless form!—himself as motionless. “Self-defence is not murder!” he at length murmured. “Self-defence is not murder!” he repeated. But no false arguments could stifle the shocking conviction to which his suddenly cooled faculties had awakened. The conviction that a too fatal fierceness had accompanied the pressure with which he had held the fallen madman to the earth after immediate danger to himself had ceased. The vital breath, suspended by wild excitement and frantic exertion, might have, would have returned had not that cruelly continued pressure impeded the efforts of nature. Such feelings, however, shortly yielded to a dread of the consequences of what had happened; attended thus by, at least, very suspicious circumstances. He stood up, and looked all round him. It was solitude everywhere; and Oswald’s hat had rolled into the lake. He seized the thought, drew the body towards the margin, and pushed it in also. It sunk, and the water closed over it. Henry gazed on the spot whence it had disappeared, till the last spreading circle had melted away; then, turned to depart. But, started and shuddered on beholding full, attentive eyes fixed upon him, as it were observing his movements! For a moment, he felt detected; but the next, recovered from his panic, for the eyes were only those of a stately deer. The animal stood at a little distance, beneath a tree; his face turned full round, his head proudly erect, sustaining the weight of his branching horns. Henry envied him! And now striking hastily into a walk, that led towards the Castle, he debated with himself, in great agitation, whether he should mention what had happened to Lord Arandale, pleading the dreadful necessity of self-defence, against a maniac, who would else have taken his life; or, whether he should remain silent, and suffer it to be supposed that Oswald had drowned himself. That such a man should commit an act of suicide could not surprise any one, and Henry, therefore, determined on the latter alternative. It was on this occasion that he entered the breakfast-room on the first morning of the races, just as Lady Arandale was enquiring of the butler, if any one had been in Sir Archibald’s room. It was at this breakfast that Lady Susan had observed on Henry’s not having any appetite. It may now too be imagined what his feelings of consternation must have been, when, within an hour after, little Arthur, mistaking him for Edmund, laid hold of the side of his coat, and asked him, in a cautious whisper, where his poor papa was.