One bleak east-wind day struck home. He took to his bed with a chill, which turned to peritonitis; the system showed no power of resistance, and he died. On the day but one before he died, when the mortal pain was gone, but death was absolutely certain, he sent post-haste for his brother Reuben. Reuben he believed was married to a decent woman, and to Reuben he meant to commend his children. Reuben arrived, looking more bewildered and stupid than ever, pure countryman that he was, in this London which he had never seen. Sandy looked at him with a deep inward dissatisfaction. But what could he do? His marriage had cut him off from his old friends, and since its wreck he had had no energy wherewith to make new ones. 'I've never seen your wife, Reuben,' he said, when they had talked awhile. Reuben was silent a minute, apparently collecting his thoughts. 'Naw,' he said at last; 'naw. She sent yo her luve, and she hopes iv it's the Lord's will to tak yo, that it ull foind yo prepared.' He said it like a lesson. A sort of nervous tremor and shrinking overspread Sandy's face. He had suffered so much through religion during the last few months, that in this final moment of humanity the soul had taken refuge in numbness--apathy. Let God decide. He could think it out no more; and in this utter feebleness his terror of hell--the ineradicable deposit of childhood and inheritance--had passed away. He gathered his forces for the few human and practical things which remained to him to do. 'Did she get on comfortable with father?' he asked, fixing Reuben with his eyes, which had the penetration of death. Reuben looked discomposed, and cleared his throat once or twice. 'Wal, it warn't what yo may call just coomfortable atween 'em. Naw, I'll not say it wor.' 'What was wrong?' demanded Sandy. Reuben fidgeted. 'Wal,' he said at last, throwing up his head in desperation, 'I spose a woman likes her house to hersel when she's fust married. He wor childish like, an mighty trooblesome times. An she's allus stirrin, and rootin, is Hannah. Udder foak mus look aloive too.' The conflict in Reuben's mind between his innate truthfulness and his desire to excuse his wife was curious to see. Sandy had a vision of his father sitting in his dotage by his own hearth, and ministered to by a daughter-in-law who grudged him his years and his infirmities, as he had grudged his wife all the troublesome incidents of her long decay. But it only affected him now as it bore upon what was still living in him, the one feeling which still survived amid the wreck made by circumstance and disease.