“Your brother? I never thought of him till this moment!”
“Nor I, till my mother asked for him. There—no—that’s George. What can have become of him?”
As he spoke, George, white and terrified, came panting up the path and threw himself upon James.
“Jem! Where’s Mysie; where’s Mysie?” Involuntarily James glanced back at the drawing-room, where now the window was shut and the blind drawn down behind it.
“Have you heard anything, George?” he said; “there has been a sad accident on the lock.”
“I have seen Hugh,” said George.
“Hugh! Where?”
“In the copse by the lock. Oh, Jem, he was sitting on the ground, and he had Arthur’s gun in his hand—not his own—and there was a dead rabbit. He looked—I couldn’t ask him a word. He said: ‘Go home, George, there’s no more shooting; Mysie is drowned, and—and—’”
“Steady, my boy,” said the doctor, as George paused and gasped, “take your time. What did he say?”
“He said—he said, ‘I have killed her!’”