“Are his affairs in order, do you know?” said the doctor, after paying his late visit, as the curate accompanied him to the door. He had just given it as his opinion that his patient could not see another morning; and Mr. Nolan had made up his mind to remain at the rectory all night. “I shouldn’t think it; he has never taken much trouble with his affairs.” “Then don’t you think you could speak to him even now? I never saw a man so clear-headed, and in such possession of his faculties, so near--Speak to him, Nolan. He knows exactly how things are, and no agitation can harm him now. He must have some wishes about his family--some arrangements to make.” Mr. Nolan restrained with difficulty an exclamation that rose to his lips, and which might have sounded unkind to a dying man; and then he asked abruptly, “Do you find, in your experience, that people who are dying are much concerned about those they leave behind?” “Well, no,” said the doctor, doubtfully; “I don’t think they are. Self gets the upper hand. It is all Nature can do at that moment to think how she is to get through”-- “I suppose so,” said the curate, with that seriousness which naturally accompanies such a speculation. He walked with the doctor to the gate, and came back across the plot of shrubbery, musing, with a heavy heart, on the living and on the dying. It was a lovely starlight night, soft and shadowy, but with a brisk little questioning air which kept the leaves a-rustle. Mr. Nolan shivered with something like cold, as he looked up at the stars. “I wonder, after all, where he is going?” he said to himself, with a sympathetic ache of human curiosity in his heart. CHAPTER VIII.