To die of hunger there within five hundred yards of five thousand people, not the humblest of whom would refuse to share with him his crust, if that humblest of the upper earth but knew how dire his extremity. To die of hunger there, with money in his pocket, when, within a stone's throw of the door of that tower, there were ten places whose only business was to supply food, not to those who were absolutely hungry in the sense of their approaching death through hunger, but to those who were hungry in the ordinary trivial routine of the day. It seemed horrible. He took down his hands from before his eyes, and looked with horror around him. To be alone without any chance of delivery and in danger of death is bad, seemingly almost the worst condition in which a man could find himself; but to be alone, beyond succour, threatened by death, and in the presence of the already dead, is ten thousand times more appalling. In the former case we know to a certainty, we are assured beyond doubt that we shall die, but the realisation of death is unfixed and' shadowy. We have, ever since we can remember, known we should die. We have seen death, touched death, kissed the dear dead, seen the dead put finally away in the cold envicinage of earth. But few have sat looking at the dead, waiting for death. Here to Lavirotte death was approaching. There to Lavirotte was an exemplar of the dead. As that was, he should be. The whole blue vault of heaven should vanish. The whole sweet plains and dales and hills of earth should be to him no more. No more to him than to _that_ lying there now before him. Hope and love and joy and friendship, and the sweet commune with the great body of sympathetic man, where experience had first developed, expectancy had first arisen, and vague and splendid imaginings had had their hint and form, should all, all evanesce. Here, upon what was to have been the completion of their joint great work, was to be no reward, but their joint death. Of old he had smiled at Crawford's enthusiastic belief in this buried treasure. Then he had come to share Crawford's beliefs and hopes. Now he had come to share Crawford's despair and grave. Out of that vault there was no chance he should ever go alive. The friends whom he had striven to serve would believe him to have been a foolish braggart or a vicious liar. The girl whom he was to wed would know no more of his fate than though a whirlwind had plucked him up and cast him, unseen by man, into the middle of the sea. There would be no record of him when all was over, until, perhaps, a century hence reference would be made somewhere to his bones. It was hotter here than above-ground, much hotter.