We reinstated old Mounse on his watch, only with strict orders that the granulated eyelids were to be kept wide open. Old Mounse was one of those rare persons with the _delirium tremens_, who had hovered on the verge of dissolution for thirty years, and still lived along. Palsied and feeble, and crippled and unshaven, and dirty and whiny, he just managed to keep himself on this side of the grave. The adjective “old,” which had become a prefix to his name, could not have been better applied, for his clothes, too, were ready at any moment to keep him company and return to their original element. Old Mounse’s one merit was, he had become so aged that he could just do what he was told and nothing more. The case had assumed altogether a new aspect to him, now that Boydell seemed to have friends. Every day the doctor reported the condition of his patient, which grew more and more unfavorable, until one morning he came and told us he thought Boydell had not over twenty-four hours to live. We went immediately to the tavern with him. Boydell, for the first time since his illness, was perfectly conscious. Here, in the silence of this barren room, unhallowed by the presence of sorrowing ones, the wild, reckless life was drawing to a close. It seemed as if the specter hands of death were already stretched out to snap the last binding thread. The face on the pillow, haggard and ghastly with its hollow cheeks, very little resembled the one over which that weary, indefinable expression, the shadow, the forerunner of the fever, had crept but three weeks ago. Boydell recognized me, and motioned to a chair beside the bed. He made two or three efforts before he spoke. “I am going to die—” We could only answer by silence. It was something terrible to see this strong man, now weaker than an infant, lie calmly on the brink of eternity; even old Mounse dropped his beefy lids, and drew back with a subdued sniffle of awe. We asked if there was any thing that he wished done. After a little he turned his head that his voice might the better reach us. “I have relatives—it will not matter to them that I am gone; they hold themselves up in the world; it will only be a disgrace wiped out; but—I would like them to know, and when I am dead, why—I wish you would please write to—to my brother. I have not heard from him for nearly fifteen years.” He closed his eyes, and seemed to dream, but presently roused himself, and looked anxiously about the room. “There was something else—oh, yes. Tell him that—I am gone. He is rector of St. Paul’s Church, S——, Lower Canada.” He paused and then said slowly, as though repeating his words for the first time, “It is no matter—but tell him I am—dead.” He felt up and down the seam of the quilt feebly with his fingers, then closed his eyes again in unconsciousness.