"How dare you say that, young man! Are you not ashamed to give utterance to such sentiments?" "Look here!" coolly retorted Leonard. Catching hold of the bag to shake it, out tumbled a dead hen with ruffled feathers. Sir John looked grave. Leonard held it up. "I thought so. It is still warm. He has stolen it from some poultry-yard." I chanced to be standing close to North as Leonard said it, and felt a feeble twitch at my trousers. Poor North was trying to attract my attention; gazing up at me with the most anxious face. "No," said he, but he was almost too faint to speak now. "No. Tell them, sir, No." But Harry Vale was already taking up the defence. "You are wrong, Mr. Herbert Leonard. I gave that hen myself to North half-an-hour ago. Some little lads, my cousins, are at the farm to-day, and one of them accidentally killed the hen. Knowing our people would not care to use it, I called to North, who chanced to be passing at the time, and told him he might take it if he liked." A gleam of a smile, checked by a sob, passed over the poor man's face. Things wear a different aspect to us in the hour of death from what they do in lusty life. It may be that North saw then that theft, even of a fowl, _was_ theft, and felt glad to be released from the suspicion. Sir John looked as pleased as Punch: one does not like to hear wrong brought home to a dying man. Herbert Leonard turned off indifferently, strolling back across the field and cracking his whip; and Featherston came pelting up. The first thing the doctor did, when he had seen North's face, was to take a phial and small glass out of his pocket, and give him something to drink. Next, he made a clear sweep of us all round, and knelt down to examine the wound, just as the poor gipsy wife, fetched by the child, appeared in sight. "Is there any hope?" whispered the Squire. "Hope!" whispered back Featherston. "In half-an-hour it will be over." "God help him!" prayed the Squire. "God pardon and take him!" Well, well--that is about all there is to tell. Poor North died, there as he lay, in the twilight; his wife's arm round his neck, and his little girl feebly clasped to him. What an end to the bright and pleasant day! Sir John thanked Heaven openly that it was not we who had caused the calamity. "For _somebody_ must have shot him, lads," he observed, "though I dare say it was accidental. And it might have chanced to be one of you--there's no telling: you are not too cautious with your guns."