But the next morning he did not rise from his bed. Bronchitis had declared itself. A local doctor, hastily called in, hinted at some injury to the lungs, and spoke guardedly of a possible weakness of the heart. From that hour Arthur never left his father's bedside. Mrs. Bundy no sooner heard the news than she flew to the rescue. The astonished street beheld a carriage with prancing horses at the door, from which emerged a lady in a long sealskin jacket, who entered the humble house, and did not return. She had established herself as Masterman's nurse, glad to exchange the idle trivialities of Kensington for these hard duties of helpful service. Bundy sent his own physician, a famous specialist, who took Arthur aside, and asked him gravely what his father's habits of life had been. When Arthur told him who his father was, and how he had lived since he came to Tottenham, he became yet more grave. "I think I see," he said. "You won't mind my saying that a sudden change of life at your father's age was a great mistake." "My father would have it so." "I understand." "Is there any danger?" "There is always danger where there is serious illness. I ought to tell you, your father's condition is precarious. There is such a thing as a man's loosening his grasp on life--doing it purposely, I mean. Against that condition the best medical skill is useless." "Then you think he will die?" "Yes; his troubles are nearly over." Arthur returned to the sick-room with a sinking heart. It seemed an inconceivable thing that that strong frame, the vehicle of so many energies, should be in process of dissolution. It had fulfilled the intention of its Maker for so many years, borne heat and cold, the strain of struggle and fatigue, with such a perfect adaptation, with such indefatigable vigour, its every atom mutely obedient to the guiding will; and now it must be numbered with the spent forces of creation. It must return to the womb of Nature from which it sprang, and become part of the innumerable dust of perished generations. Such was the law of waste that ruled the world--an awful thought to a son beside a father's death-bed. And against the certain working of that law, what had man to place but frail and feeble hopes; what, at best, but the solemn asseveration of a faith daily contradicted by the incontrovertible realities of physical dissolution, by the stark facts of departure, disappearance? ... An awful thought, indeed, before which the stoutest hearts have trembled. His father lay quite silent. He had not spoken for many hours. There was no sound but the soft hissing of the steam in the bronchitis kettle, and the dropping of a cinder on the hearth. Towards dawn he spoke. "Well... well! ... Seems as if it was all a mistake.... A-striving and a-struggling, and nothing come of it. Folk'll laugh.... Him as had the city at his feet, working for poor old Grimes. It's a poor end!--a poor end!" "Father, don't you know me?"