The Argosy — page 35: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

22 Winifred Power. if [ am pleased with you, I will stand your friend. And we will get Martha off also—call her insane, perhaps.” Cowed afresh by this reiteration of the danger hanging over her, Mary rose, sulkily, but obediently, and accompanied her brother downstairs. ‘There the respectful Jacobs was waiting for them, and the dinner began in its usual form. But it was not destined to be thus concluded. All at once the » sttent brother and sister were startled by the sound of a heavy fall in the room above, which was Mr. Hatherley’s sitting-room. They looked at one another with questioning eyes, and John half rose from his seat, listening. , At this moment in rushed Mrs. Hoare, pale and scared. ‘Oh, sir! the master! . . . he is lying insensible! ..) % jee think he is dead.” When the son and daughter reached their father’s side, they found him lost to all consciousness, but still breathing. The doctor, summoned in haste, pronounced the attack to be a fresh seizure, and declared his conviction that it was destined to be the last ; which sent the whole house into a commotion. In point of fact, the old man never rallied, and, just when the dawn was breaking, he went. John was calm, but grave and attentive; Mary, shattered with fatigue, and worn out by a quick succession of emotions, quite subdued. “Now, don’t take on, my dear,” said Mrs. Hoare, forgetting some- thing of her acquired respect in her native motherliness. ‘‘ What is it you say? If he had only spoken again? Well, well, the ways of — Providence are mysterious. And it is quite certain the poor gentle- man loved you, and if he had been unjust, his intention was likely to remedy it. Or I should not have found him standing where I did,” concluded the good woman, smoothing her apron with a casual air. ‘What do you mean?” asked Mary, raising her tear-stained face. ‘You heard the fall? Yes. Well, I had gone into the room that instant. Poor master, he was standing by his writing-table, with his hand on the very drawer from which Mr. John has just carried a bundle of documents into hisown room. He turned as I came in and said,‘ Mrs. Hoare,’ he says, ‘later this evening, when Jacobs is free Then he stopped. ‘ Yes, sir ?’ says I, thinking he had only just stopped to reflect, may be. But he stood like a statue—his hand just raised. Miss, it was awful. It was as if he was listening to a distant voice. Then all at once his poor face was drawn, he gave a little gasp, and before I could catch him he had fallen in a heap upon the floor. And, Miss Mary, he never spoke again.” This story of Mrs. Hoare’s preoccupied Mary. She, as well as the housekeeper, had seen John remove a bundle of papers from a drawer of his father’s writing-table and take them to his own room. Was the codicil among these? If so, John’s first care would of course be to destroy it. Mary knew that an unsigned codicil was not of Gomicbooksneo