darker shadows among the rest, knelt the dying man's family--wife and
daughter and son. And hovering aloof, with pale, anxious faces, stood
the rector, the Reverend Cyrus Green, and Doctor Parker Godroy.

The last hope was over, the last prayer had been said, the last faint
breaths uttered between the dying lips. With the tide going out on the
shore below, the baronet's life was ebbing.

"Olivia!"

Lady Kingsland, kneeling in tearless grief by her husband's side, bent
over him to catch the faint whisper.

"My dearest, I am here. What is it?"

"Where is Everard?"

Everard Kingsland, a fair-haired, blue-eyed, handsome boy, lifted his
head from the opposite side. It was a handsome, high-bred face--the
ancestral face of all the Kingslands--that of this twelve-year-old boy.

"Here, papa!"

"My boy! my boy! whom I have loved so well--whom I have shielded so
tenderly. My precious, only son, I must leave you at last!"

The boy stifled a sob as he bent and kissed the ice-cold face. Young
as he was, he had the gravity and self-repression of manhood already.

"I have loved you better than my own life," the faint, whispering voice