Sir Thomas Crawley had sneaked and shuffled through life, and, by doing so with a degree of talent which if exerted in a righteous cause might have gained him the love and respect of good men, had obtained the world’s prizes--rank and riches. But tact and cleverness, rank and riches, were equally useless to him now, for he had met with an opponent whom he could neither bribe, nor cheat, nor intimidate, nor cajole. Face to face with death, all his worldly wisdom failed him. Dying! he could not believe it--so much yet remained for him to do. If he could but live for two months longer he should be a baronet--for two years, and he might have married the proud peer’s daughter, and transmitted the rank and honours he had won to a long line of descendants. Then, indeed, then, when he had accomplished his desire, then the idea of death might not have appeared so monstrous, so impossible. But even then he should have required a little time to prepare for death. Poor, self-deceived fool! as if every hour you have lived, every word you have spoken--ay, and every thought you have thought, were not preparing you for death and for eternity! It is not what you have achieved that will help you now; it is what you have been--what you are! The meek and lowly of heart will compose the aristocracy of Heaven; and the lame, and the halt, and the blind, who have borne their cross patiently, shall be its mighty ones: he who best has loved God and his neighbour--he whose life has been one unconscious preparation for death--he shall reap the reward;--else is Heaven but a mockery, and death, the “long dark day of nothingness,” the sceptic’s idea of death, extinction, annihilation, is the only reality. Sir Thomas Crawley was dying; he knew it before Ernest Carrington brought the English physician; he knew it when the physician’s eye first met his own; he knew it when Mr. Selby urged him to sign his will. But he could not, he would not believe it. He was weak, he said; Germany did not agree with him; he had worked too hard, and required rest and society: that was his reason for summoning Mr. Carrington. Had Selby brought the papers he required?--old Sir Ralph Carrington’s will?--good! and his own will?--good! Let that be destroyed now, before his eyes--good!--he should make a fresh one when he reached Ashburn Priory. But he did not do so, for the very good reason that men in their coffins cannot make wills, and Sir Thomas reached Ashburn a corpse, and took up his abode in his family vault, handsomely bound in mahogany and black velvet, ornamented with a real silver plate, whereupon were engraved a goodly list of virtues, of which nobody had suspected him when living, but of which the undertaker always kept a large ready-made supply on hand, for the benefit of such of his customers as were rich enough to afford them. Nothing was said about his vices, perhaps because the silver plate was not half long enough to contain them.