“Hope!” whispered back Featherston. “In half-an-hour it will be over.”
“God help him!” prayed the Squire. “God pardon and take him!”
Well, well—that is about all there is to tell. Poor North died, there as he lay, in the twilight; his wife’s arm round his neck, and his little girl feebly clasped to him.
What an end to the bright and pleasant day! Sir John thanked Heaven openly that it was not we who had caused the calamity.
“For somebody must have shot him, lads,” he observed, “though I dare say it was accidental. And it might have chanced to be one of you—there’s no telling: you are not too cautious with your guns.”
The “somebody” turned out to be George Leonard. Harry Vale (who had strong suspicions) was right. When they dispersed after their target practising, one of them, George, went towards Briar Wood, his pistol loaded. The thick trees afforded a promising mark, he thought, and he carelessly let off the pistol at them. Whether he saw that he had shot a man was never known; he denied it out and out: didn’t know one was there, he protested. A waggoner, passing homewards with his team, had seen him fire the pistol, and came forward to say so; or it might have been a mystery to the end. “Accidental Death,” decided the jury at the inquest; but they recommended the supercilious young man (just as indifferent as his brothers) to take care what he fired at for the future. Mr. George did not take the rebuke kindly.
For these sons had hard, bad natures; and were doing their best to bring down their father’s grey hairs with sorrow to the grave.
But how strange it seemed altogether! The poor young gipsy-wife’s subtle instinct that evil was near!—and that the shot should just have struck him instead of spending itself harmlessly upon one of the hundreds of trees! Verily there are things in this world not to be grasped by our limited understandings.