The sun had gone down, and the shades of evening seemed to set in with a strange, unaccountable chill, as he limped about, looking after his stock and other possessions. Decidedly there was a lonely feeling, vague, indefinable, which hovered about him. And then those dreadful chills increased. Lying out in that rock-crevice, in fact lying out for several nights insufficiently covered, had sown the seeds. Assuredly no luck had come to him through meddling with the King's grave. And then, before evening had merged for an hour into dark night, Hilary Blachland lay shivering beneath his piled-up blankets as though they had been ice--shivering in the terrible ague-throes of that deadly malaria--weak, helpless as a child, deserted, alone. End of Book I. CHAPTER ONE. WISER COUNSELS. "That scamp! That out-and-out irreclaimable scamp! A hundred is just ninety-nine pound nineteen more than he deserves. A hundred. No--I'll make it two." Sir Luke Canterby looked up from the document he had been perusing and annotating, and biting the end of his pen, sat gazing meditatively out of the window. It was a lovely day of early spring, and the thrushes were hopping about the lawn, and the rooks in the great elms were making a prodigious cawing and fuss over their nest-building. All Nature was springing into new life in the joyous gladsome rush of the youthful year, but the old man, sitting there, was out of harmony with rejuvenated Nature. His meditations and occupation were concerned, not with life, but with death. The document before him was nothing less momentous than the draft of his last will and testament. In appearance, however, there was nothing about Sir Luke Canterby to suggest impending dissolution, either now or in the near future. Seated there surrounded by the dark oak of his library, he represented a pleasant and wholesome type of old age. He was tall and spare, and, for his years, wonderfully straight. He had refined features and wore a short beard, now silvery white, and there was a kindly twinkle in his eyes. He was a rich man, but had not always been, and, although of good parentage, had made his money in commerce. He had been knighted on the occasion of a Royal visit to the mercantile centre wherein at the time he was prominent, but in his heart of hearts, thought but little of the `honour' in fact, would have declined it could he have done so with a good grace. His gaze came back to the paper with a troubled look, which deepened as he made the correction. For although to the legatee in question two hundred pounds would be better than none, yet the said legatee had had reason to expect that the bulk of the whole would be left to him. Still the testator sat staring at what he had just effected, as if it were something he did not relish at all, and in fact, no more he did. Then an interruption occurred in the shape of a knock at the door and the entrance of a servant.