In the summer time, from the door of a darkened room, a gray-haired, bent old man had just followed a great surgeon down the wide staircase of Woodlea Hall.

The surgeon looked around when he reached the last steps, and there was kindly pity on his grave face as he met the appealing eyes that were fixed on his.

“I am sorry to say there is no hope, Mr. Temple,” he said, in answer to the mute inquiry on his listener’s face.

Mr. Temple’s bowed gray head bent a little lower when he heard this verdict, and that was all.

“Is he your only son?” asked the surgeon, commiseratingly.

“He is our only child,” answered Mr. Temple.

“Ah—that is sad, but there is no doubt football is a dangerous game.”

“How—how long will he be spared to us?” now inquired Mr. Temple with quivering lips.

“He will drift away probably during the night, or in the small hours of the morning. He will not regain consciousness; the injury to the base of the brain is too severe.”

The great surgeon only stayed a few minutes longer in the grief-stricken household after this, and then was driven away. And when he was gone, with a heavy sigh—almost a moan—Mr. Temple began to ascend the staircase, and on the first landing a lady was standing waiting for him with terrible anxiety written on her pale face.

Mr. Temple looked up when he saw her, and shook his head, and as he did this the lady sprang forward and gripped his hand.

“What did he say?” she asked in a hoarse whisper.

“Come in here, my poor Rachel,” he answered gently, and as he spoke he led her forward into a room on the landing, the door of which chanced to be open, and then closed it behind them. “My dear—I grieve very much to say—Sir Henry’s opinion is not very favorable.”

His voice broke and faltered as he said these words, and a sort of gasping sigh escaped the lady’s lips as she listened to them.

“What did he say?” she repeated, with her eyes fixed in a wild stare on Mr. Temple’s face.

“He—he said we must prepare—”

“No, no! not to lose him!” cried the lady with a sudden passionate wail. “Phillip, I can not, I will not! He was so bright a few hours ago—so bright and well—my Phil, my boy—and now, now—it will kill me if he dies!”

She flung herself on the floor in a frantic passion of grief before her husband could prevent her, and lay there writhing in a terrible paroxysm of despair, while the gray-haired man beside her bent over her, and tried in vain to comfort or soothe her. She was his wife, but fully twenty years younger than he was; a handsome dark-eyed woman, of some thirty-five years, and the injured boy lying in the darkened room was her only child.

“Who did it?” she suddenly cried, raising herself up. “Who murdered him? Which of the boys?”

“My dear, it is so difficult to tell in a scramble—so difficult to find out.”

“I will find out!” went on Mrs. Temple, passionately. “I do not believe it was an accident; someone must have struck him on the head. Oh! my boy, my darling!” she continued, rocking herself to and fro; “the one thing I had to love; the only one that loved me—must, must I lose you, too!”

“It is a terrible blow, Rachel—but—”

“Why not try someone else? Do you hear, Phillip?” said Mrs. Temple, now starting to her feet, and grasping her husband’s arm. “Send or telegraph for another doctor at once.”

“My dear, it would do no good,” answered Mr. Temple, sadly. “You heard what Doctor Brown said; Sir Henry Fairfax is one of the first surgeons in town—and—he said there was no hope.”

A wild shriek broke from Mrs. Temple’s lips as she heard this fatal verdict. Her agonized grief was indeed pitiful to behold. Again and again she repeated that her boy was the one being that she had to love; was the only one she loved, and the gray-haired old man sighed deeply as he listened to her frantic words.

She never seemed to think of his grief, nor even to remember it. It was her own loss she harped on; her own misery. But Mr. Temple did not reproach her with this. He did not say my heart, too, is broken; the spring of my life is gone. Yet this was so. The poor lad Phillip Temple, drifting away so fast from life, had been the center of all his hopes, the pivot of all his joy. And he, too, was telling himself sadly, as he listened to his wife’s moans, that the boy had been the only one who had loved him, or who had cared for his love.

“She never loved me,” he thought, looking at the handsome grief-stricken woman before him; and as he did so his memory went back to fifteen years ago; back to the days when he, the squire, had gone wooing to the whitewashed parsonage house, and had won the dark-eyed girl on whom he had set his heart. He had not asked himself then if her heart was his. She seemed to like him; she smiled on him and accepted his presents, and her mother hinted at the advantages of an early wedding-day.

So they were married, and by and by Mr. Temple found out his mistake. She had never loved him, and one morning fell fainting from her chair when she read the news that a soldier cousin had been killed at some distant Indian outpost.

And in the days that followed he learnt the truth. Her cousin had been her lover, but the old hindrance, want of money, had stood between them, and thus Mr. Temple had won his wife. She made very little secret of this to her husband, and did not affect love she could not feel. Her child became her idol, and from the time when the baby boy began first to lisp her name she worshiped him with the whole strength of her passionate, ill-regulated heart.

The boy, however, had been a bond between the husband and wife, and they had got on fairly well together for his sake. They used to talk to each other of his future, and it was a subject equally dear to them both. He was a fine, healthy, clever lad of fourteen when he went out to play football on the fatal day when he was carried back to his father’s house insensible. He had somehow fallen, and a rush of boys had swept over him, and when they raised him up he never spoke again. They took him back to Woodlea Hall; the village doctor was sent for in all haste, and at once advised further advice to be telegraphed for. This was done, and Sir Henry Fairfax arrived from town only to pronounce the case to be hopeless.

It was a terrible affair, people said, terrible for the poor mother and for the poor squire, who somehow was the most popular of the two. Country neighbors called at the lodge gates, with commiserating inquiries, while the parents hung over the speechless boy, waiting in terrible anxiety for Sir Henry Fairfax’s arrival. He came late in the afternoon, and did not stay long. He carefully examined the unconscious lad, heard what the country doctor had to say, and then told the father the truth.

The boy was dying; the little heir to the broad acres and the old name was about done with earthly things. It had been a beautiful day; the sun had blazed down from a cloudless sky on the wide park, the glowing flower-beds, and the green lawns of Woodlea Hall. It seemed a mockery; outside so bright, inside so full of gloom. Still, until Sir Henry Fairfax’s arrival, there had been hope. Doctor Brown, the country doctor, had spoken of “returning consciousness” to the anxious mother. They had watched and waited, however, for that “returning consciousness” in vain. The lad lay white and still, breathing slowly, with closed eyes. He took no notice of his mother’s tender words, of her fond appeals. He did not hear them, and his bright eyes were closed to smile no more.

“Rachel, my dear, will you leave him any longer alone?” at last Mr. Temple ventured to say, as his wife wept and moaned, and he laid his hand on her shoulder as he spoke.

She started and looked up.

“Did you say no hope?” she asked, wildly.

“Sir Henry said—” faltered Mr. Temple.

“Then there is none for me—none, none!” went on the wretched woman, in her despair. “Why should I lose everything? Why should God take everything from me? I have been a good woman for Phil’s sake, and He is going to take him—all the good that is in me will be buried in his grave!”

“Hush, hush, my poor girl; do not talk thus.”

“What do you understand,” continued Mrs. Temple, yet more wildly, “of love like mine? You are old—you do not suffer—”

“I do, God knows I do!” cried the unhappy man, and tears rushed into his eyes, and ran down his furrowed cheeks as he spoke.

“When George Hill died, I bore it for Phil’s sake,” went on Mrs. Temple, regardless, or forgetful, of the useless pain she was inflicting; “and now—and now, my darling, my darling, must I lose you, too?”

“Come to him now, at least,” urged Mr. Temple; “you would wish to be with him, would you not, Rachel? There may be some—parting word.”

Mrs. Temple moaned aloud.

“You mean before he—”

“Before he leaves us. Come, my poor Rachel, for his sake try to compose yourself.”

These words seemed to have some effect on the unhappy mother. She made an effort to be calm, and a few minutes later, leaning on her husband’s arm, and tottering as she went, she returned to the bedside of the dying boy.

Those standing round it moved back as she approached it. There were present the village doctor and Mrs. Layton, Mrs. Temple’s mother, and the poor lad’s nurse. No one spoke. Doctor Brown had already told Sir Henry Fairfax’s opinion to the two weeping women, and Mrs. Layton silently put her hand into her daughter’s as she neared the bed. But Mrs. Temple shrank from this mark of sympathy. Without a word she fell on her knees and fixed her eyes on the face of the unconscious boy.

No wonder she had loved him. He had inherited her own handsome features, and dark marked brows, and lithe slim form. But his disposition had not been like hers. He lacked her waywardness, her excitability. He had been a sunny-faced, sunny-hearted lad, and to see him lying thus—mute, white, and still—was inexpressibly painful.

They watched him hour after hour. The sun dipped behind the green hills that lay to the west, and slowly the summer daylight began to fade, and still there was no change. Mrs. Layton crept noiselessly out of the room to go down to the vicarage to see after her husband and household, but all the rest remained. The gray-haired father sat at one side of the bed, and at the other the mother knelt. From time to time the doctor felt the small brown wrist that lay outside the coverlet, and the old nurse by the window was praying silently.

But Mrs. Temple breathed no prayer. In her heart was hot revolt and despair. She never took her eyes from her boy’s face, and her expression told her anguish. Once the doctor poured her out some wine, but she put it from her with a gesture of loathing.

And so the numbered hours stole on. Presently a new light shone into the room—a soft pale radiancy—and the moonbeams lit the dying face. They fell on it more than an hour, and then a faint change took place in the breathing. The doctor bent down and listened; the father drew a gasping sigh. It was the passing away of the young soul; and a moment or two later they were forced to tell Mrs. Temple that she was childless.

Then the pent-up anguish broke loose. The bereaved mother caught the dead boy in her arms, and called to him by every endearing name to come back to her.

“Come back, my darling, my darling; do not leave me alone!” she shrieked in her despair.

They sent for her mother, but the very presence of Mrs. Layton seemed still further to excite her.

“But for you,” she cried, turning on her mother in her frantic grief, “he would never have been born! But for you I would have been with George—George Hill, from whom you parted me!”

It was a most painful scene. Mrs. Layton drew the gray-haired old squire out of the room, and tried to whisper some words of comfort in his ear.

“Grief has made poor Rachel beside herself,” she said. “Fancy her talking of George Hill now, when the poor fellow has been dead over ten years. They were children together, you know.”

But Mr. Temple made no answer. He knew very well that his wife was speaking the truth, and that his mother-in-law was not. He turned from Mrs. Layton and went into his library, and sat there alone, thinking. The boy’s death had changed everything. Mr. Temple was a rich man, for besides his own large property, he had in his youth married for his first wife the daughter and heiress of Sir Richard Devon, whose estates marched with his own. At her death this lady had left everything she possessed to her husband, and thus Mr. Temple was one of the largest land-owners in the country.

The old man sighed when he thought of all this, and covered his face with his hands. He was thinking who would now come after him; thinking of his heir. He knew who it must be. The Woodlea estates had been entailed by his father in the event of his having no children, beyond him. The late Mr. Temple had left two sons, Phillip, the heir, and John, who had gone into the army and died young. But he had married, and left a son, also named John. This John Temple the squire knew was now the heir to Woodlea. He was a man of some thirty years old, and occasionally had visited his uncle, but no great intimacy had existed between them.

John Temple had a fair fortune, and had not sought to increase it. He had been educated as a barrister, but he had never practiced. He had lived a good deal abroad, and led a roving life, it was said, but his uncle knew very little about him. He had had in truth small interest in him. But now all this was changed. His bright young son, his hope and pride, had passed away, and the old squire, sitting with his bowed head, knew that John Temple was his heir.