Thus the waters closed in placid circles, widening out into smiles of well-pleased fortune, around the spot where Horace Scarsdale disappeared; and one of the great stakes he had played his deadly play for, slid out of his reach into the polished hands of a quiet spectator, who staked nothing. But he did not know that; he thought of nothing--not even of Amelia--as he rushed along to the railway, and flew by that iron road, at the swiftest pace, to the nearest neighbouring town he could reach in the vicinity of Lanwoth Moor; he was beyond thinking in the extremity of his haste and desperation. The black wings were spread over the lonely house. Death, whom he had invoked, was coming--his fortune would soon be all his own; but there was never spectator at a tragedy who held his breath for its consummation as Horace Scarsdale did, rushing out of his own black, unrepentant remorse and misery to Marchmain. CHAPTER XX. How that dark interval of time had passed at Marchmain no one could tell--for Peggy, the only individual who could have known, had long ceased to speculate on her master's sentiments and feelings, and learned to content herself with things as they came. But just as Colonel Sutherland, in single-minded devotion to the interests of his young friend Roger, and an honest and simple desire to set right the harm which he supposed to have been done by his nephew, had drawn close in his circles of laborious but unprofitable investigation to Lanwoth Moor, Peggy's attention had been called to her master's bodily condition. He had spent an agitated and restless night, as she could hear by his motions in his own room, and, for the first time in twenty years, did not get up in the morning. When Peggy went to him, alarmed by this extraordinary occurrence, she found him in bed, paralysed in one side, unable to speak, his face somewhat distorted, and everything helpless about him except his eyes. It was evidently and beyond any doubt "a stroke," and poor Peggy, alone in her solitude, and not knowing what to do--afraid to leave him to seek assistance, and unable to ascertain what were his own wishes--put the disordered room tidy by instinct in the first place, until she was driven out of it, scared and breathless, by those eyes which followed her movements everywhere. "Like as if an evil spirit had ta'en possession," she said to herself, as she went quicker than usual in her fright and perplexity down the stairs; and Peggy described many a day after how it was like an angel of mercy to hear "Mr. Edward, that is now the Cornel, the Lord bless him," knocking at the door all of a sudden, and asking if all was well at Marchmain. "I tould him all was as ill as ill could be; and he never so much as cam in to rest, but went forth with his staff in his hand five mile of road for the doctor and help," said Peggy; "and ye may all tell me about his own business and other things he had in hand, and owght ye please, but