“Oh, why is he like that?” I whispered. “’Tis a common afterclap in deaths by drowning,” said he, speaking in a loud, insistent voice, as if not for the first time. “A stoppage--a relapse. During the weak small hours, when the patient’s strength is at its lowest, the overwrought lungs refuse to work--collapse, and he dies of suffocation.” He looked at my father as he spoke, but elicited no response. It was palpable that the heavy potations of the night had so deadened the latter’s faculties as to make him incapable for the moment of realizing the full enormity of the sight before him. “Mark me,” said the doctor; “it’s a plain case, I say, nothing out of the way; no complications. The wretched boy to all intents and purposes has been drowned.” “Who drowned him?” said my father. He spoke thickly, stupidly; but I started, with a dreadful feeling that the locked jaws must relax and denounce me before them all. Seeing his hopeless state, the doctor took my father’s arm and led him from the room. Zyp still clung to my brother. “Cover it up,” whispered Jason. “He isn’t a pretty sight!” “He wasn’t a pretty boy,” muttered Peggy, reluctantly hiding the dreadful face; “To a old woman’s view it speaks of more than his deserts. Nobody’ll come to look at me, I expect.” “You heard what the doctor said?” asked Jason, looking across at me. “Yes.” “Drowned--you understand? Drowned, Renny?” “Drowned,” I repeated, mechanically. “Come, Zyp,” he said; “this isn’t the place for you any longer.” They passed out of the room, she still clinging to him, so that her face was hidden. I did not measure his words at that time. I had no thought for nice discriminations of tone; what did I care for anything any longer? Presently I heard old Peg muttering again. She thought the room was emptied of us and she softly removed the face cloth once more. “Ay, there ye lies, Modred--safe never to spy on poor old Rottengoose again! Ye were a bad lot, ye were; but Peg’s been more’n enough for you, she has, my lad.” Suddenly she saw me out of the tail of her eye, and turned upon me, livid with fury. “What are ye listening to, Renalt? A black curse on spies, Renalt, I say!” Then her manner changed and she came fawning at me fulsomely. “What a good lad to stay wi’ his brother! But Peg’ll do the tending, Renalt. She be a crass old body and apt to reviling in her speech, but she don’t mean it, bless you; it’s the tic doldrums in her head.” I repelled the horrible old creature and fled from the room. What she meant I neither knew nor cared, for we had always looked upon her as a feckless body, with a big worm in her brain.