This strange and unannounced interruption naturally broke the unpleasant chain of conversation between father and daughter; and the eyes of both, during her moment of enforced silence to recover breath, looked upon her with equal wonder and alarm. "Oh, Mr. Brand!" and here the breath gave out again and she sank exhausted into the chair which Elsie pushed up to her. "You are sick? Somebody has insulted or hurt you? What _is_ the matter, Kitty?" she asked. "Oh, no, no!" at last the school-mistress mustered breath to say, at short, jerky intervals. "Nothing ails _me_, except that I am out of breath; but your son, Mr. Brand." "Well, what of _him_?" asked the old man, his tone sharp and angry and his brow frowning, confident that the coming information must have some connection with the disgraceful report of the morning--that Kitty Hood had only run herself out of breath in her anxiety to tell his family unwelcome news that they already knew too well. "Oh, sir, Mr. Carlton--your poor brother, Elsie!--is dead!" "Dead!" The word had two echoes--one, from the lips of Robert Brand, little else than a groan; and the other from poor tortured Elsie, compounded between groan and shriek. "Oh, yes, how can I tell it?" the young school-mistress went on, as fast as her broken breath would allow. "I found him lying dead, only a little while ago, by the gate, down at the blind-road, as I came across from school; and I have run all the way here to tell you!" "My poor brother dead! oh, Carlton!" moaned Elsie Brand; then, but an instant after, and before the old man had found time to speak again, the curse came up in connection with the bereavement and she broke out, hysterically: "See what you have done, father! You wished poor Carlton dead, and now you have your cruel wish! Oh, my poor, poor brother!" "Silence, girl!" spoke Robert Brand, sharply, with a not unnatural dislike to have the school-mistress made aware of what had so lately passed. The old man was terribly affected, but he managed to control himself and to speak with some approach to calmness. "You are sure, Kitty, that you saw my son lying dead?" "Oh, yes, Mr. Brand, he was lying dead on the grass close by the gate." "Lying alone?" The voice of the father trembled, in spite of himself, as he asked the question. "All alone, and he could only have been dead a few moments. He looked so." "Was there--" and the old lawyer tried to steady his voice as he had many a time before done when asking equally solemn questions concerning the fate of other men's children--"did you see any thing to prove what killed him? He went away from home on horseback--" "Yes, he was on horseback at Mrs. Hayley's only a little while ago," Elsie mustered strength to interrupt.