Jane smiled a fierce smile into the moonlight. Passionate love of animal life, intense regard for all life, even of the tiniest insect, was as much a religion with her as the worship of beauty was with Garth. She never could pretend sorrow over these accounts of shooting accidents, or falls in the hunting-field. When those who went out to inflict cruel pain were hurt themselves; when those who went forth to take eager, palpitating life, lost their own; it seemed to Jane a just retribution. She felt no regret, and pretended none. So now she smiled fiercely to herself, thinking: "One pair of eyes the less to look along a gun and frustrate the despairing dash for home and little ones of a terrified little mother rabbit. One hand that will never again change a soaring upward flight of spreading wings, into an agonised mass of falling feathers. One chance to the good, for the noble stag, as he makes a brave run to join his hinds in the valley." Meanwhile the military-looking man had readjusted his eye-glasses and was holding the sheets of a closely written letter to the light. "No," he said after a moment, "shooting parties are over. There is nothing doing on the moors now. They were potting bunnies." "Was he shooting?" asked the girl. "No," replied the owner of the letter, "and that seems such hard luck. He had given up shooting altogether a year or two ago. He never really enjoyed it, because he so loved the beauty of life and hated death in every form. He has a lovely place in the North, and was up there painting. He happened to pass within sight of some fellows rabbit-shooting, and saw what he considered cruelty to a wounded rabbit. He vaulted over a gate to expostulate and to save the little creature from further suffering. Then it happened. One of the lads, apparently startled, let off his gun. The charge struck a tree a few yards off, and the shot glanced. It did not strike him full. The face is only slightly peppered and the brain quite uninjured. But shots pierced the retina of each eye, and the sight is hopelessly gone." "Awful hard luck," said the young man. "I never can understand a chap not bein' keen on shootin'," said the youth who had not yet spoken. "Ah, but you would if you had known him," said the soldier. "He was so full of life and vivid vitality. One could not imagine him either dying or dealing death. And his love of the beautiful was almost a form of religious worship. I can't explain it; but he had a way of making you see beauty in things you had hardly noticed before. And now, poor chap, he can't see them himself." "Has he a mother?" asked the older woman.