Miles Challoner left the room with the nurse, and when they were alone, he took the first opportunity of asking her real opinion as to his father's state. This she gave him frankly and fully, telling him moreover what Dr. Barford had said as to the necessity of not delaying anything which he might have to say to the Squire. Miles thanked her, and then sat down to his cheerless meal. His thoughts were preoccupied, and he ate and drank but little, pausing every now and then, bestriding the room, reseating himself, and leaning his head on his hand with a helpless puzzled air, as one to whom the process of thought was unfamiliar. He could scarcely realise the fact that the presiding spirit of the place, the man whose will had been law ever since he could recollect, "the Squire," who, with diminished possessions and failing fortunes, had commanded, partly through his own style and manner, partly through the prestige attaching to the family, more respect and esteem than all the members of the invading calicocracy put together,--he could scarcely realise that this rural autocrat's power was ebbing, and that he himself lay on his death-bed. On his death-bed!--that was a curious thought: Miles Challoner had never attempted to realise the position, and now; when vaguely he attempted it, he failed. Only one thing came out clearly to him after his attempted examination of the subject, and that was that it would be most desirable to be at peace with all the world, and that any enmity cherished to the last would probably have a most disturbing and uncomfortable effect. Pondering all this he returned to the sick-room. During his absence, the curtains had been closed and the night-lamp lighted. The nurse sat nodding in a large easy-chair by the bedside, and the Squire lay in a dozing state, half-waking now and again as his head slipped off the high pillow on which it rested, or when the heaviness of his breathing became specially oppressive. Miles seated himself on a couch at the foot of the bed, and fatigued by his journey, soon fell asleep. He seemed to have been unconscious only a few minutes, but in reality had slept nearly an hour, when he was awakened by a touch on the shoulder, and opening his eyes, saw the nurse standing by him. "The Squire's calling for you," she said, adding in a whisper, "he's going fast!" Miles roused himself, and crept silently to the head of the bed, where he found his father gasping for breath. The Squire's dim eyes recognised his son, and between the paroxysms of laboured respiration he again threw his arm round Miles's neck and touched the bowed forehead with his lips. Then the thoughts that had been fermenting in Miles Challoner's heart for so many years, and which had caused him such mental disturbance that night, at length found vent in words. With his father's arm around him, and with his face close to the old man's, Miles said: "Father! one word, only one! You hear and understand me?" A pressure of the