“Well, just as if it had been one of them things settling down, the bird’s wings turned round and fluttered and shook, and at last it all lighted, quite soft like, on the roof of our house, the _Hit or Miss_. And there I saw it crouching when I went to bed, and looked out o’ the window, but they wouldn’t none o’ them believe me, my lord.” There was a dead silence in the Court as Eliza finished this extraordinary confirmation of Winter’s evidence, and wove the net inextricably round the prisoner. Then the silence was broken by a soft crashing sound, as if something heavy had dropped a short distance on some hard object. All present turned their eyes from staring at Eliza to the place whence the sound had come. The prisoner’s head had fallen forward on the railing in front of him. One of the officers of the Court touched him on the shoulder. He did not stir. They lifted him. He moved not. The faint heart of the man had fluttered with its last pulsation. The evidence had sufficed for him without verdict or sentence. As he had slain his victim, so Fate slew him, painlessly, in a moment! EPILOGUE. And what became of them all? He who does not tell, on the plea that he is “competing with Life,” which never knits up a plot, but leaves all the threads loose, acts unfairly. Mrs. St. John Deloraine is now Mrs. Maitland, and the happy couple are visiting the great Colonies, seeking a site for a new settlement of the unemployed, who should lead happy lives under the peaceful sway of happy Mrs. Maitland. Barton and Mrs. Barton have practised the endowment of research, in the case of Winter, who has quite recovered from his injuries, and still hopes to fly. But he has never trusted himself again on his machine, which, moreover, has never flown again. Winter, like the alchemist who once made a diamond by chance, in Balzac’s novel, has never recovered the creative moment. But he makes very interesting models, in which Mrs. Barton’s little boy begins to take a lively interest. Eliza Gullick, declining all offers of advancement unconnected with the British drama, clings to the profession for which, as Mrs. Gullick maintains, she has a hereditary genius. “We hear,” says the _Athenæum_, “that the long promised edition of ‘Demetrius of Scepsis,’ by Mr. Bielby, of St. Gatien’s, is in the hands of the delegates of the Clarendon Press.” But Fiction herself is revolted by the improbability of the statement that an Oxford Don has finished his _magnum opus!_ EXPLICIT. End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Mark Of Cain, by Andrew Lang