He kept smiling to himself; so living as he was, and everything round, it was an odd sort of discord to think of dying. He felt a kind of blank before him, a sense of being shut in. So one feels when one walks along a bit of road surrounded with walls, a _cul de sac_ from which there is no outlet. A sense of imprisonment is in it, of discouragement, too little air to breathe, too little space to move in--certainly a disagreeable, stifling, choking sensation. Involuntarily a sigh came from his breast; and yet he smiled persistently, feeling in himself a kind of defiance to all the world, a determination to be amused at it all, notwithstanding the sentence they were passing against him. While the Squire continued his walk, amid the twitter of the birds and the warble and the crackle and rustle and hum in the woods, and all the sounds of living, now and then another sound struck in--a sound not necessarily near, for in that still summer air sounds travel easily--an echo of voices, now one soft cry or laugh, now a momentary babble. It struck the old man as if an independent soul had been put into the scene. He knew very well what it meant--very well--no one better. By very dint of his opposition to them he recognized the sound of the children wherever they were. They were there now, the little things whose presence had moved Randolph to this assault upon his father. They were altogether antagonistic to Randolph, or rather he to them; this gave them a curious perverse interest in their grandfather’s eyes. They offered him an outlet from his _cul de sac_; the pressure seemed suddenly removed which had bowed him down; in a moment he felt relieved, delivered from that sense of confinement. A new idea was like the opening of a door to the old man; he was no longer compelled to contemplate the certainty before him, but was let softly down into the pleasant region of uncertainty--the world of happy chances. The very character of the smile upon his face changed. It became more natural, more easy, although he did not know the children, nor had any intention of noticing them. But they were there, and Randolph might scheme as he liked; here was one who must bring his schemes to confusion. A vague lightening came into the Squire’s thoughts. He was reprieved, if not from the inevitable conclusion, at least from the necessity of contemplating it; and he continued his walk with a lighter heart. By and by, after a somewhat long round, and making sundry observations to himself about the state of the timber which would bear cutting, and about the birds which, without any keeper to care for them, were multiplying at their own will, and might give some sport in September, Mr. Musgrave found himself by the lake again with that fascination towards the water which is so universal. The lake gleamed through the branches, prolonging the blue of the sky, and calling him with soft plashing upon the beach, the oldest of his friends, accompaniment of so