The warm June sun rode gaily in the bright-blue skies, and the sweet June Roses were in bloom. Mrs. Andinnian, entirely unconscious of the blight that had fallen on her younger son, was placidly making the home happiness (as she believed) of the elder. Had she known of Karl\'s sorrow, she would have given to it but a passing thought.

There was peace in the home again. The vexation regarding their young lady-neighbour had long ago subsided in Mrs. Andinnian\'s mind. She had spoken seriously and sharply to Adam upon the point--which was an entirely new element in his experience; telling him how absurd and unsuitable it was, that he, one of England\'s future baronets, and three-and-thirty years of age already, should waste his hours in frivolous talk with a girl beneath him. Adam heard her in silence, smiling a little, and quite docile. He rejoined in a joking tone.

"All this means, I suppose, mother, that you would not tolerate Miss Turner as my wife?"

"Never, Adam, never. You would have to choose between myself and her. And I have been a loving mother to you."

"All right. Don\'t worry yourself. There\'s no cause for it."

From this time--the conversation was in April, at the close of Karl\'s short visit to them--the trouble ceased. Adam Andinnian either did not meet the girl so much: or else he timed his interviews more cautiously. In May Miss Turner went away on a visit: Adam seemed to have dismissed her from his mind: and Mrs. Andinnian forgot that she had ever been anxious.

Never a word of invitation had come from Sir Joseph. During this same month, May, Mrs. Andinnian, her patience worn out, had written to Foxwood, proffering a visit for herself and Adam. At the end of a fortnight\'s time, she received an answer. A few words of shaky writing, in Sir Joseph\'s own hand. He had been very ill, he told her, which was the cause of the delay in replying, as he wished to write himself. Now he was somewhat better, and gaining strength. When able to entertain her and her son--which he hoped would be soon--he should send for them. It would give him great pleasure to receive them, and to make the acquaintance of his heir.

That letter had reached Mrs. Andinnian the first day of June. Some three week\'s had elapsed since, and no summons had come. She was growing just a little impatient again. Morning after morning, while she dressed, the question always crossed her mind: will there be a letter to-day from Foxwood? On this lovely June morning, with the scent of the midsummer flowers wafting in through the open chamber window, it filled her mind as usual.

They breakfasted early. Adam\'s active garden habits induced it. When Mrs. Andinnian descended, he was in the breakfast-room, scanning the pages of some new work on horticulture. He wore a tasty suit of grey, and looked well and handsome: unusually so in his mother\'s eyes, for he had only returned the past evening from a few days\' roving absence.

"Good morning, Adam."

He advanced to kiss his mother: his even white teeth and his grey eyes as beautiful as they could well be. Mrs. Andinnian\'s fond and admiring heart leaped up with a bound.

"The nonsense people write whose knowledge is superficial!" he said, with a gay laugh. "I have detected half a dozen errors in this book already."

"No doubt. What book is it?"

He held it out to her, open at the title-page. "I bought it yesterday at a railway-stall."

"What a nice morning it is!" observed Mrs. Andinnian, as she was busy with the cups.

"Lovely. It is Midsummer Eve. I have been out at work these two hours."

"Adam, I think that must be the postman\'s step," she remarked presently. "Some one is going round to the door."

"From Karl, perhaps," he said with indifference, for he had plunged into his book again.

Hewitt came in; one letter only on the silver waiter. He presented it to his master. Adam, absorbed in his pages, took the letter and laid it on the table without looking up. Something very like a cry from his mother startled him. She had caught up the letter and was gazing at the address. For it was one that had never before been seen there.

"Sir Adam Andinnian, Bart."

"Oh my son! It has come at last."

" What has come?" cried he in surprise. "Oh, I see:--Sir Joseph must be dead. Poor old fellow! What a sad thing!"

But it was not exactly Sir Joseph\'s death that Mrs. Andinnian had been thinking of. The letter ran as follows:--


"FOXWOOD, June 22nd.

"DEAR SIR,-I am truly sorry to have to inform you of the death of my old friend and many years\' patient, Sir Joseph Andinnian. He had been getting better slowly, but we thought surely; and his death at the last was sudden and quite unexpected. I have taken upon myself to give a few necessary orders in anticipation of your arrival here.

"I am, Sir Adam, very sincerely yours,

"WILLIAM MOORE.
Sir Adam Andinnian."


The breakfast went on nearly in silence. Mrs. Andinnian was deep in thoughts and plans. Sir Adam, poring over his book while he ate, did not seem to be at all impressed with the importance of having gained a title.

"When shall you start, Adam?"

"Start?" he returned, glancing up. "For Foxwood? Oh, in a day or two."

" In a day or two!" repeated his mother, with surprised emphasis. "Why, what do you mean?"

"Just that, mother."

"You should be off in half an hour. You must, Adam."

"Not I. There\'s no, need of hurry," he added, with careless good humour.

"But there is need of it," she answered.

"Why? Had Sir Joseph been dying and wished to see me, I\'d not have lost a single moment: but it is nothing of the kind, poor man. He is dead, unfortunately: and therefore no cause for haste exists."

"Some one ought to be there."

"Not at all. The Mr. Moore who writes--some good old village doctor, I conclude--will see to things."

"But why should you not go at once, Adam?" she persisted. "What is preventing you?"

"Nothing prevents me. Except that I hate to be hurried off anywhere. And I--I only came back to the garden yesterday."

"The garden!--that\'s what it is," resentfully thought Mrs. Andinnian. He read on in silence.

"Adam, if you do not go, I shall."

"Do, mother," he said, readily. "Go, if you would like to, and take Hewitt. I hate details of all kinds, you know; and if you will go, and take them on yourself, I shall be truly obliged. Write me word which day the funeral is fixed for, and I will come for it."

Perhaps in all her life Mrs. Andinnian had never resented anything in her favourite son as she was resenting this. She had looked forward to this accession of fortune with an eager anxiety which none could suspect: and now that it was come, he was treating it with this cool indifference! Many a time and oft had she indulged a vision of the day when she should drive in to take possession of Foxwood, her handsome son, the inheritor, seated beside her.

"One of my sons ought to be there," she said, coldly. "If you will not go, Adam, I shall telegraph to Karl."

"I will telegraph for you," he replied, with provoking good-humour. "Karl will be the very fellow: he has ten times the head for business that I have. Let him act for me in all things, exactly as though it were he who had succeeded: I give him carte blanche. It will save all trouble to you."

Sir Adam Andinnian declined to be shaken out of his resolve and his inertness. In what might be called a temper, Mrs. Andinnian departed straight from the breakfast-table for the railway-station, to take the train. Her son duly accompanied her to see her safely away: she had refused to take Hewitt: and then he despatched a telegram to Karl, telling him to join his mother at Foxwood. Meantime, while these, the lady and the message, went speeding on their respective ways, the new baronet beguiled away the day\'s passing hours amidst his flowers, and shot a few small birds that were interfering with some choice seedlings just springing up.


Lieutenant Andinnian received the message promptly. But, following the fashion much in vogue amidst telegraphic messages, it was not quite as clear as daylight. Karl read that Sir Joseph was dead, that his mother was either going or gone to Foxwood; that she was waiting for him, and he was to join her without delay. But whether he was to join her at her own home and accompany her to Foxwood, or whether he was to proceed direct to Foxwood, lay in profound obscurity. The fault was not in Sir Adam\'s wording; but in the telegraph people\'s carelessness.

"Now which is it that I am to do?" debated Karl, puzzling over the sprawling words from divers points of view. They did not help him: and he decided to proceed home; he thought his mother must be waiting for him there. "It must be that," he said: "Adam has gone hastening on to Foxwood, and the mother is staying for me to accompany her. Poor Uncle Joseph! And to think that I never once saw him in life!"

Mr. Andinnian had no difficulty in obtaining leave of absence: and he started on his journey. He was somewhat changed. Though only a month had gone by since the severance from Lucy Cleeve, the anguish had told upon him. His brother officers, noting the sad abstraction he was often plunged in, the ultra-strict fulfilment of his duties, as if life were made up of parades and drill and all the rest of it, told him in joke that he was getting into a bad way. They knew naught of what had happened; of the fresh spring love that had made his heart and this earth alike a paradise, or of its abrupt ending. "My poor horse has had to be shot, you know"--which was a fact; "and I can\'t forget him," Mr. Andinnian one day replied, reciprocating the joke.

The shades of the midsummer night were gathering as Karl neared the house of his mother. He walked up from the terminus, choosing the field-path, and leaving his portmanteau to be sent after him. The glowing fires of the departed sun had left the west, but streaks of gold where he had set illumined the heavens. The air was still and soft, the night balmy; a few stars flickered in the calm blue firmament: the moon was well above the horizon. This pathway over the fields ran parallel with the high road. As Mr. Andinnian paced it, his umbrella in his hand, there suddenly broke upon his ears a kind of uproar, marring strangely the peaceful stillness of the night. Some stirring commotion, as of a mass of people, seemed to be approaching.

"What is it, I wonder?" he said to himself: and for a moment or two he halted and stared over the border of the field and through the intervening hedge beyond. By what his sight could make out, he thought some policemen were in front, walking with measured tread; behind came a confused mob, following close on their heels: but the view was too uncertain to show this distinctly.

"Some poor prisoner they are bringing in from the county," thought Mr. Andinnian, as the commotion passed on towards the town, and he continued his way.

"This is a true Midsummer Eve night," he said to himself, when the hum of the noise and the tramping had died away, and he glanced at the weird shadows that stood out from hedges and trees. "Just the night for ghosts to come abroad, and---- Stay, though: it is not on Midsummer Eve that ghosts come, I think. What is the popular superstition for the night? Young girls go out and see the shadowy forms of their future husbands? Is that it? I don\'t remember. What matter if I did? Such romance has died out for me."

He drew near his home. On the left lay the cottage of Mr. Turner. Its inmates seemed to be unusually astir within it, for lights shone from nearly every window. A few yards further Karl turned into his mother\'s grounds by a private gate.

Their own house looked, on the contrary, all dark. Karl could not see that so much as the hall-lamp was lighted. A sudden conviction flashed over him that he was wrong, after all; that it was to Foxwood he ought to have gone.

"My mother and Adam and all the world are off to it, no doubt," he said as he looked up at the dark windows, after knocking at the door. "Deuce take the telegraph!"

The door was opened by Hewitt: Hewitt with a candle in his hand. That is, the door was drawn a few inches back, and the man\'s face appeared in the aperture. Karl was seized with a sudden panic: for he had never seen, in all his life, a face blanched as that was, or one so full of horror.

"What is the matter!" he involuntarily exclaimed, under his breath.

Ay, what was the matter? Hewitt, the faithful serving man of many years, threw up his hands when he saw Karl, and cried out aloud before he told it. His master, Sir Adam, had shot Martin Scott.

Karl Andinnian stood against the doorpost inside as he listened; stood like one bereft of motion. For a moment he could put no questions: but it crossed his mind that Hewitt must be mad and was telling some fable of an excited brain.

Not so. It was all too true. Adam Andinnian had deliberately shot the young medical student, Martin Scott. And Hewitt, poor Hewitt, had been a witness to the deed.

"Is he dead!" gasped Karl. And it was the first word he spoke.

"Stone dead, sir. The shot entered his heart. \'Twas done at sunset. He was carried into Mr. Turner\'s place, and is lying there."

A confused remembrance of the lights he had seen arose to Karl\'s agitated brain. He pressed his hand on his brow and stared at Hewitt For a moment or two, he thought he himself must be going mad.

"And where is he--my brother!"

"The police have taken him away, Mr. Karl. Two of them happened to be passing just at the time."

And Karl knew that the prisoner he had met in custody, with the guardians of the law around and the trailing mob, was his brother, Sir Adam Andinnian.