It was not strange, then, that when Nicholas Hill was suddenly seized with hemorrhage of the lungs and brought home in an almost dying condition from his store, one afternoon in November, 1856, Dr. Pomeroy, who was hurriedly summoned to his aid, was summoned quite as much in the capacity of friend as in that of medical attendant. The story of life or death was soon told. The merchant had believed, from the moment of attack, that his day of probation was over; and, apart from his natural anxiety for the welfare of his only child, there was little tie to bind the sufferer to earth. His wife--his wife that day as much as she had been at any period of their wedded life,--had long been awaiting him, as he believed, in a better world; and there is something in the facility with which those quiet, good people, who seem never to have enjoyed existence with the fiery zest which tingles in finger and lip of the sons of pleasure and sorrow, give up their hold upon being and pass away into the infinite unknown which lies beyond the dark valley,--something that may well make it a matter of question whether theirs is not after all the golden secret of human happiness, for which all ages have been studying and delving. The doctor came, with that rapidity which was usual with him, and with every mark of intense interest on his face and in his general demeanor. He found the invalid sinking rapidly, and his attendants, the weeping Eleanor, then a handsome, promising but defectively-educated girl of near eighteen, and two or three of the ladies of the near neighborhood who had gathered in to tender their services when it was known that the merchant had been brought home in a dying condition. A few words from the sufferer, uttered in a low tone almost in the ear of the stooping physician, and then all the others were sent out of the room except his daughter, whose pleading gesture, asking to be allowed to remain within the room was not disregarded, but who was motioned by the doctor to take her place at the window, beyond supposed hearing of the words that were to pass between the two friends. "Tell me the exact truth," said the low voice of Nicholas Hill, when these dispositions had been made. "I am prepared to hear any judgment which your lips may speak. There is no hope for me?--I am dying?" Either the doctor could not speak, or he would not. He merely bowed his head in a manner that the questioner well understood. "So I thought, from the first," said the dying man. "The life blood does not flow away in that manner for nothing. And I do not know that I regret the end, for I have lived almost as long as I could make myself useful, and I think I am as nearly prepared to die as poor, fallen humanity can hope to be."