"Good God! Was that why they went away?" Larry said, with a horror that scarcely permitted of speech. "Do you mean the place isn't theirs any more?" He thought: "I wish he'd take his hand off my knee! Thank God, I'm out of it!" "It" meant marriage with the daughter and the sister of men who could do such things. Perhaps some telepathic vibration from that wave of repulsion reached Barty. "You needn't think I had anything to do with it," he muttered, withdrawing his hand, "or ever will!" he added, as if to himself. Larry remained silent; the car ground into the heavy river-gravel on the sweep in front of the house, and ceased at the door that he had not seen since that day of wrath when he had cast his cousins behind him for ever. CHAPTER XLII Dr. Mangan's body was still lying on the door on which it had been carried up from the river-bank. Kitchen chairs now supported it where it lay, with its burden, between the high windows, in the desolate, sheeted dining-room, surrounded by portraits of Talbots, and Lowrys, and their collaterals, who would surely have considered the presence of Francis Aloysius Mangan, dead or alive, as something of an intrusion, not to say a liberty. Old Evans opened the hall door, and silently led the two young men through the hall, and opening the dining-room door, left them there. They stood looking down on the Big Doctor in silence. The strong, coarse face had taken on that aloof dignity, even splendour of expression, that death can confer. The servants had covered all else with a sheet; the soaked fur collar of the coat was turned up, and made a pillow for the big, iron-grey head. With a shaking hand Barty turned back the sheet. His father's thick, powerful hands were crossed on his broad breast. The son stooped and kissed them, humbly; then he replaced the sheet, and kissed the heavy brow, from which all the marks of the turmoil of life had been smoothed. "I believe he is near us," he whispered; he took a prayer-book from his pocket and knelt, his head resting on the covered form. Larry knelt also. If only Barty had not told him that abhorrent thing. He tried to forget it, to pray for the soul of the man who had, as he believed, always been kind to him, and a good friend. Larry was undevout, careless, thinking little of spiritual things, so little, that he had scarcely troubled himself either to question or to accept what he had been taught, but he was quick to respond to emotion of any kind; now he listened, with an unaccustomed reverence, to Barty's voice, brokenly whispering the prayers of his Church. Their unfamiliar beauty stirred his imagination, their appeal for mercy wakened his heart, and made him ask himself what was he that he should refuse mercy! He felt the anger, that had only been roused in him within the last few minutes, dying, merged in pity and in awe.