Colonel Dacre went to his room then, even undressed, and lay down, although he knew sleeping was out of the question. He heard all the hours strike up to three o’clock, and then he fell into what seemed like a doze, although all his senses were unnaturally acute. So acute, indeed, that when he heard a groan presently, he knew what direction it had proceeded from, and did not wait for a repetition to spring out of bed, and hurry into his clothes. In another minute he was down the stairs, and, unbolting the door softly, so as not to disturb mine host, he found himself in the garden. Another groan, fainter though than the first, guided him to a little copse by the roadside, where lay, apparently in the agonies of death, Lady Gwendolyn’s “braw wooer,” the man whose splendid privileges he had envied the night before. For one cruel moment Colonel Dacre rejoiced to see his enemy laid so low; but better feelings intervened, and he remembered nothing but that the other was in a sore strait, and needed his aid. He knelt down beside him, and said quite gently: “I am afraid you are hurt. Have you had an accident?” The dim eyes unclosed, and the blue lips muttered a word faintly. But although Colonel Dacre bent close down he could not catch it, and he shook his head expressively. The dying man made a great effort, and repeated, in a loud whisper: “Poisoned.” “By whom?” inquired Colonel Dacre, resolutely but reluctantly. But the poor creature’s mind had wandered off, and he babbled of “Mother” incoherently, as if he fancied he were a child again. Colonel Dacre would have fetched some brandy from the inn, but as he saw that no human means could avail aught, he considered it better to remain where he was. Almost involuntarily he began to repeat the beautiful prayer with which most of us begin and end our day, and when he came to “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive them that trespass against us,” the dying man raised himself on his elbow, and said, loudly and distinctly: “Tell her I forgive her, and----” But the sentence was never finished in this world. He fell back heavily on the turf, and when Colonel Dacre looked into his face he saw that he was gone. CHAPTER VI. THE LAST WALTZ. For fully five minutes Colonel Dacre knelt beside the lifeless body, then he rose up stern and resolute to do his duty. First of all he roused Wiginton, and had the dead man carried into the inn, and laid on the bed he had occupied twenty-four hours ago. Wiginton evidently thought that it was a case of sudden death, for he said, with real feeling: “Poor gentleman! And he looked so healthy, too. Hadn’t I better go for a doctor, sir?” “Perhaps you had; although it will be of no use,” was Colonel Dacre’s reply. “I dare say not; but it might have an ugly look if we tried to hush the thing up, sir.”