Stooping over him, the Squire pulled the coat aside. The stains were larger now, the flow was greater. North bent his head forward to look, and somehow got his hand wet in the process. Wet and red. He snatched it away with a kind of horror. The sight seemed to bring upon him the conviction that his minutes were numbered. His _minutes_. Which is the last and greatest terror that can seize upon man. "I'm going before God now, and I'm not fit for it," he cried, a shrieking note, born of emotion, in his weakening voice. "Can there be any mercy for me?" The Squire seemed to feel it--he has said so since--as one of the most solemn moments of his life. He took off his spectacles--a habit of his when much excited--dropped them into his pocket, and clasped his hands together. "There's mercy with God through the Lord Jesus always," he said, bending over the troubled face. "He pardoned the thief on the Cross. He pardoned all who came to Him. If you are Walter North, as they tell me, you must know all this as well as I do. Lord God have mercy upon this poor dying man, for Christ's sake!" And perhaps the good lessons that North had learnt in childhood from his mother, for she was a good woman, came back to him then to comfort him. He lifted his own hands towards the skies, and half the terror went out of his face. Some one once said, I believe, that by standing stock still in the Strand, and staring at any given point, he could collect a crowd about him in no time. In the thronged thoroughfares of London that's not to be surprised at; but what I should like to know is this--how is it that people collect in deserts? They _do_, and you must have seen it often. Before many minutes were over we had quite a levee: Sir John Whitney, William, and Featherston's nephew; three or four labourers from Vale Farm; Harry Vale, who had met Featherston, and outrun him; and one of the tall sons of Colonel Leonard. The latter, a young fellow with lazy limbs, a lazy voice, and supercilious manner, strolled up, smacking a dog-whip. "What's the row here?" cried he: and William Whitney told him. The man had been shot: by whom or by what means, whether wilfully or accidentally, remained to be discovered. "Did you do it--or your brothers?" asked Harry Vale of him in a low tone. And Herbert Leonard whirled round to face Vale with a haughty stare. "What the devil do you mean? What should we want to shoot a tramp for?" "Any way, you were practising with pistols at your target over yonder this afternoon." Leonard did not condescend to reply. The words had angered him. By no possibility could a shot, aimed at their target, come in this direction. The dog-whip shook, as if he felt inclined to use it on Harry Vale for his insolent suggestion. "Such a fuss over a tramp!" cried Leonard to Sir John, not caring who heard him. "I dare say the fellow was caught thieving, and got served out for his pains." But he did not well know Sir John--who turned upon him like lightning.