The tear overtops the eyelid, and falls upon the dark shooting-jacket; and then, bending down his head, he presses his lips upon the marble brow. A drop (of the heart's dew) will be found there in the morning; for there is no warmth in that cold forehead to dry it up. The curtains are closed again; the room is once more vacant of breath. The image of human life upon the table, that decreasing taper, gutters down with droppings like those of a petrifying spring. A spark of fire, like some angry passion of the heart, floats in the melted wax above, nourishing its flaming self by wasting that it dwells in. Then comes back the watcher, with bleared and vacant eyes, and lips that smell of brandy. She has sense enough yet to stop the prodigal consumer of her only companion of the night; and sitting down, she falls asleep in the presence of death, as if she were quite familiar with the grave, and had wandered amongst the multitudes that lie beneath. CHAPTER II. It was the autumn of the year, when men who do such things, shoot pheasants, and go hunting. The leaves had fallen from the trees, and were blown about in heaps by the chill wind; or if any hung upon the sapless branches, it was but as the tatters of a shroud on the dry bones of some violated tomb; the grass in the fields was brown, and beaten down by wind and storm; the streams were flooded with yellow torrents from the hills, and waved about in wild confusion the thick, fleshy stems of the water weeds; and the face of earth, cold and spiritless like that of a corpse, glared up to the sunless sky, without one promise of the glorious resurrection of the spring. It was night, too, dull, gray night. The raven's wing brooded over the whole world; clouds were upon the firmament; no moonbeam warmed with sweet prophecy the edge of the vapour; but, dim and monotonous, the black veil quenched the starry eyes of heaven, and the shrill wind that whistled through the creaking tree-tops, stirred not even the edges of that dun pall so as to afford one glimpse of things beneath. There was a dark clay-like smell in the air, too, a smell of decay; for the vegetable world was rotting down into the earth, and the death of the year's life made itself felt to every sense. All was dark, and foul, and chilly as a tomb.