“I was just saying that,” said Duncan plunging down upon the spongy grass. He slid and stumbled, tearing long strips of moss off the roots of the trees with which he came in heavy contact, striding over the fallen trunk which had played so great a part in the drama of that afternoon. There were signs of footsteps there, and Duncan slid on the slippery and trampled soil and came down on his back, but got up again at once and took no notice. This accident perhaps delayed him for a moment, and the need of precaution as he descended after such a warning. At all events Glendochart coming quickly by the roundabout of the road arrived only a moment after, and found Duncan dragging out upon the bank an inanimate figure which had apparently been lying half in half out of the stream. Duncan’s ruddy face had grown suddenly pale. “Lord keep us! Do ye think he’s dead, sir?” “I hope not, Duncan,” said Glendochart, kneeling down by the body; but after a few minutes, both men scared and horror-stricken bending over the figure on the grass, “God preserve us,” he said, “I fear it is so. Do you know who it is?”--then a hoarse exclamation burst from them both. “It’s the young lord from the lodge on the hill--It’s Lord John! God preserve us!” cried Glendochart again. “What can this mean? But a man that’s drowned may be brought to life again,” he added. “How are we to get him home?” Duncan, roused by the wonderful event which had thus come in a moment into the tranquil ordinary of his life, rushed along the road calling with a roar for help, which it was not easy to find in that lonely place. However there proved to be one or two people within call--the gamekeeper who lived at the lodge inhabited by Lord John, and the blacksmith from the clachan, who had been carrying some implement home to a distant mountain farm. They managed to tie some branches roughly together to make a sort of litter and thus carried the dead man to Drumcarro, which was the nearest house. The sound of the men’s feet and Glendochart’s call at the door, brought out every member of the household except the laird, who remained in his room with the door closed and took no notice. Glendochart and the gamekeeper had both some rude notion of what to do, and they acted upon their knowledge, roughly it is true, but with all the care they were capable of. Duncan on horseback, and less apt to spare his horse’s legs than his own, thundered off for a doctor. But the doctor was not easily found, and long before his arrival the rough methods of restoring animation had all been given up. Lord John lay on the mistress’s unoccupied bed to which he had been carried, like a marble image, with all the lines that a careless life had made showing still upon the whiteness of death, the darkness under the eyes, the curves about the mouth. His wet clothes, which had been cut from the limbs to which they clung, lay in a muddy heap smoking before the now blazing fire. They had piled blankets over