His old housekeeper let me in, and took me at once upstairs. He was lying on his bed, facing an open window that looked towards the tower; there was another to the right with a view of distant cornfields full of autumn sheaves. For once, she told me, that he looked at the cornfields, he looked a dozen times at the tower: “and if the Doctor and his wife would but come back,” she said, “he would surely die happy. They should be here by now, if ’twere like it was in the old times: but they went off without their young ones when the men began to rummage in the tower, and I doubt they’ll never come back again now.” The old Scholar was only half conscious, but he seemed to know me and kept my hand in his. I made up my mind not to leave him, and sat there till the shadow of the tower grew long enough to reach us, and then till the great harvest moon arose over the distant corn-sheaves. Sometimes he would murmur a few words, and once or twice I caught the favourite old treasures,—“Unde coronabitur patientia tua,” and “Nimis avide consolationem quæris.” And so we passed the night, till the moon sank again, and ‘the high lawns appeared, Under the opening eyelids of the Morn.’ Then I left him for a few minutes, and descending to the garden filled the earthenware pan with fresh water, and scattered food on the dewy grass in the dim hope that the Doctor and his wife might have come back to see the last of their old friend. And I had no sooner returned and drawn up the blinds of the sick-room than I saw them once more on the gurgoyles. I could hardly believe my eyes: I threw up the window and let the sweet air into the room. The light roused the old Scholar; he opened his eyes, and at that moment the Doctor and his wife flew past the window to their morning bath. I am sure he saw them; a smile of great happiness came over his wasted features, and he lay back and closed his eyes again. I read him the Lord’s Prayer: and after a while I heard him whisper, “Nunc coronabitur—,” as he sank into sleep. Each day, until he was laid by his old friend the Vicar, we put out the morning bath and breakfast for his last old friends; then the house was shut up, and finding that they were not expected, the Doctor and his wife departed, and were seen no more by any of us. They had done their kindly work well, and they took our thanks with them. A LUCKY MAGPIE “So you’ve kept old Mag safe all this time,” I called out, as I came through the little croft under the apple-trees, and caught sight of the farmer sitting at his door and smoking his evening pipe; and not forgetting my duty as became a midshipman in Her Majesty’s Service, I took off my cap and made three bows to the magpie, whose wicker cage was hanging just over the farmer’s head.