"Be comforted, Houseman!" said Summers, soothingly; "it is a dreadful affliction that you have sustained. I knew your daughter well: you may have heard her speak of me. Let us in, and try what heavenly comfort there is in prayer." "Prayer! pooh! I am Richard Houseman!" "Lives there one man for whom prayer is unavailing?" "Out, canter, out! My pretty Jane! And she laid her head on my bosom, and looked up in my face, and so--died!" "Come," said the curate, placing his hand on Houseman's arm, "come." Before he could proceed, Houseman, who was muttering to himself, shook him off roughly, and hurried away up the street; but after he had gone a few paces, he turned back, and approaching the curate, said, in a more collected tone: "I pray you, sir, since you are a clergyman (I recollect your face, and I recollect Jane said you had been good to her),--I pray you go and say a few words over her. But stay,--don't bring in my name; you understand. I don't wish God to recollect that there lives such a man as he who now addresses you. Halloo! [shouting to the women] my hat, and stick too. Fal la! la! fal la!--why should these things make us play the madman? It is a fine day, sir; we shall have a late winter. "Curse the b___ , how long she is! Yet the hat was left below. But when a death is in the house, sir, it throws things into confusion: don't you find it so?" Here one of the women, pale, trembling, and tearful, brought the ruffian his hat; and placing it deliberately on his head, and bowing with a dreadful and convulsive attempt to smile, he walked slowly away and disappeared. "What strange mummers grief makes!" said the curate. "It is an appalling spectacle when it thus wrings out feeling from a man of that mould! But pardon me, my young friend; let me tarry here for a moment." "I will enter the house with you," said Walter. And the two men walked in, and in a few moments they stood within the chamber of death.