"No—unless he made a mistake in the charge. He took the cartridges out of the case himself, and put them into his pocket. He was an experienced sportsman, though he was never as fond of sport as the generality of gentlemen."
"Do you know if he had been troubled in mind of late?"
"No; I don't think he had any trouble on his mind. He was in very bad health, and knew that he had not long to live; but he seemed quite happy and contented. Indeed, judging by what I saw of him, I should say that he was in a more easy, contented frame of mind during the last few months than he had ever been for the last four years."
This closed the examination. There had been very few witnesses called—only the medical man, the men who had found the body, the girl at the farm, who declared that she had given the key to Mr. Hamleigh a little before eight that morning, that no one else had asked for the key till the men came from Mount Royal—that, to her knowledge, no one but the men at work on the farm had gone up the lane that morning. A couple of farm labourers gave the same testimony—they had been at work in the topmost field all the morning, and no one had gone to the Kieve that way except the gentleman that was killed. They had heard a shot—or two shots—they were not certain which, fired between eight and nine. They were not very clear as to the hour, and they could not say for certain whether they heard one or two shots; but they knew that the report was a very loud one—unusually loud for a sportsman's shot.
Mr. Tregonell, although he was in the room ready to answer any questions, was not interrogated. The jury went in a wagonette to see the body, which was still lying at the farm, and returned after a brief inspection of that peaceful clay—the countenance wearing that beautiful calm which is said to be characteristic of death from a gun-shot wound—to give their verdict.
"Death by misadventure."
The body was carried to Mount Royal after dark, and three days later there was a stately funeral, to which first cousins and second cousins of the dead came as from the four corners of the earth; for Angus Hamleigh, dying a bachelor, and leaving a handsome estate behind him, was a person to be treated with all those last honours which affectionate kindred can offer to poor humanity.
He was buried in the little churchyard in the hollow, where Christabel and he had heard the robin singing and the dull thud of the earth thrown out of an open grave in the calm autumn sunlight. Now in the autumn his own grave was dug in the same peaceful spot—in accordance with a note which his valet, who knew his habits, found in a diary.
"Oct. 11.—If I should die in Cornwall—and there are times when I feel as if death were nearer than my doctor told me at our last interview—I should like to be buried in Minster Churchyard. I have outlived all family associations, and I should like to lie in a spot which is dear to me for its own sake."
A will had been found in Mr. Hamleigh's despatch box, which receptacle was opened by his lawyer, who came from London on purpose to take charge of any papers which his client might have in his possession at the time of his death. The bulk of his papers were no doubt in his chambers in the Albany; chambers which he had taken on coming of age; and which he had occupied at intervals ever since.