beyond that fact, though he never could quite tell whether it was the little brother’s face or another--his son’s, or his son’s son’s--which floated through this mist of recollections. He was quite happy in the curious trance which had taken possession of him. He had no active personal feelings, except that of pleasure in the recollection and thought of little Johnny--a thought which pleased and amused, and touched his heart. All anger and harm went out of the old man; he spoke softly when he spoke at all, and suffered himself to be disturbed as he never would have done before. Indeed he was far too gentle and good to be natural. The servants talked of his condition with dismay, yet with that agreeable anticipation of something new which makes even a “death in the house” more or less desirable. “Th’ owd Squire’s not long for this world,” the Cook and Tom Gardener said to each other. As for Eastwood, he shook his head with mournful importance. “I give you my word, I might drop a trayful of things at his side, and he wouldn’t take no notice,” the man said, almost tearfully; “it’s clean again nature, that is.” And the other servants shook their heads, and said in their turn that they “didn’t like the looks of him,” and that certainly the Squire was not long for this world. This same event of Randolph’s visit had produced other results almost as remarkable. It had turned little Lilias all at once into the slim semblance of a woman, grown-up, and full of thoughts. It is perhaps too much to say that she had grown in outward appearance as suddenly as she had done in mind; but it is no unusual thing in the calmest domestic quiet, where no commotion is, nor fierce, sudden heat of excitement to quicken a tardy growth, that the elder members of a family should wake up all in a moment, to notice how a child has grown. She had perhaps been springing up gradually; but now in a moment every one perceived it; and the moment was coincident with that in which Lilias heard with unspeakable wrath, horror, shame, pity, and indignation, her father’s story--that he would be put in prison if he came back; that he dared not come back; that he might be--executed. (Lilias would not permit even her thoughts to say hanged--most ignominious of all endings--though Miss Brown had not hesitated to employ the word.) This suggestion had struck into her soul like a fiery arrow. The guilt suggested might have impressed her imagination also; but the horrible reality of the penalty had gone through and through the child. All the wonderful enterprises she had planned on the moment are past our telling. She would go to the Queen and get his pardon. She would go to the old woman on the hills and find out everything. Ah! what would she not do? And then had come the weary pilgrimage which Geoff had intercepted; and now the ache of pity and terror had yielded to that spell of suspense which, more than anything else, takes the soul out of itself. What had come to the child?