"I tell you what it is, gentlemen," broke in Mr. Cole, when they were quarrelling as to whether there should be another adjournment or not, "you'll put off and put off, until Lease slips through your fingers." "Oh, will he, though!" blustered old Massock. "He had better try at it! We'd soon fetch him back again." "You'd be clever to do it," said the doctor. Any way, whether it was this or not, they thought better of the adjournment, and gave their verdict. "Manslaughter against Henry Lease." And the coroner made out his warrant of committal to Worcester county prison: where Lease would lie until the March assizes. "I am not sure but it ought to have been returned Wilful Murder," remarked the Squire, as he and the doctor turned out of the Bull, and picked their way over the slush towards Crabb Lane. "It might make no difference, one way or the other," answered Mr. Cole. "Make no difference! What d'ye mean? Murder and manslaughter are two separate crimes, Cole, and must be punished accordingly. You see, Johnny, what your friend Lease has come to!" "What I meant, Squire, was this: that I don't much think Lease will live to be tried at all." "Not live!" "I fancy not. Unless I am much mistaken, his life will have been claimed by its Giver long before March." The Squire stopped and looked at Cole. "What's the matter with him? This inflammation--that you went and testified to?" "That will be the cause of death, as returned to the registrar." "Why, you speak just as if the man were dying now, Cole!" "And I think he is. Lease has been very low for a long time," added Mr. Cole; "half clad, and not a quarter fed. But it is not that, Squire: heart and spirit are alike broken: and when this cold caught him, he had no stamina to withstand it; and so it has seized upon a vital part." "Do you mean to tell me to my face that he will die of it?" cried the Squire, holding on by the middle button of old Cole's great-coat. "Nonsense, man! you must cure him. We--we did not want him to die, you know." "His life or his death, as it may be, are in the hands of One higher than I, Squire." "I think I'll go in and see him," said the Squire, meekly. Lease was lying on a bed close to the floor when we got to the top of the creaky stairs, which had threatened to come down with the Squire's weight and awkwardness. He had dozed off, and little Polly, sitting on the boards, had her head upon his arm. Her starting up awoke Lease. I was not in the habit of seeing dying people; but the thought struck me that Lease must be dying. His pale weary face wore the same hue that Jake's had worn when he was dying: if you have not forgotten him. "God bless me!" exclaimed the Squire. Lease looked up with his sad eyes. He supposed they had come to tell him officially about the verdict--which had already reached him unofficially.