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"Improvements!" they cried with one voice. "What improvements? How could the Warren be improved?"

"You must not speak to me in such a tone. There has always been a question of cutting down some of the trees."

"But papa would never agree to it; papa said he would never consent to it."

"I think," said Mrs. Warrender, with a guilty blush, "that he—had begun to change his mind."

"Only when he was growing weak, then,—only when you over-persuaded him."

"Minnie! I see that your brother was right, and that this is not a time for any discussion," Mrs. Warrender said.

There was again a silence: and they all came back to the original state of mind from which they started, and remembered that quiet and subdued tones and an incapacity for the consideration of secular subjects were the proper mental attitude for all that remained of this day.

It was not, however, long that this becoming condition lasted. Sounds were heard as of voices in the distance, and then some one running at full speed across the gravel drive in front of the door, and through the hall. Minnie had risen up in horror to stop this interruption, when the door burst open, and Theo, pale and excited, rushed in. "Mother," he cried, "there has been a dreadful accident. Markland has been thrown by those wild brutes of his, and I don't know what has happened to him. It was just at the gates, and they are bringing him here. There is no help for it. Where can they take him to?"