In a moment I sat bolt upright, in which attitude I was soon imitated by Mrs. Tonic, on hearing the crash of one of her eight by tens. Through the aperture I now distinctly recognized the voice of Sam Saunders, who had hired with the Deacon, stating that good Mrs. Sykes was absolutely _in extremis_, or as Sam himself expressed it, "at her last gasp." On hearing this, you may be assured I was not long _in naturalibus_; but drawing on my nether integuments, I departed despite the remonstrances of Mrs. Tonic, without my wrapper and without any thing in fact except a renewed draught of my _philo humidum radicale_. My journey to the Deacon's was made with such an accelerated movement that it was accomplished as it were _per saltum_. This was owing to my great anxiety about Mrs. Sykes, though possibly in a small degree I might have dreaded an obstruction of the pores in my own person. Howbeit, on arriving at the Deacon's, I saw at once that she was beyond the healing art. There lay all that remained of Mrs. Sykes--the _disjecta membra_, the _fragmenta_--the casket! But the gem, the _mens divinior_ was gone and forever. There she lay, regardless of the elongated visage of Deacon Sykes on the one side, and of the no less elongated visage of the widow Dobble on the other side, who had been some time visiting there, and who now hung over her departed friend in an agony of woe. "Doctor," cried the Deacon, "is there no hope?" "Is there no hope?" echoed the widow Dobble. I grasped the wrist of Mrs. Sykes, but pulsation had ceased; the eye was glazed and the countenance livid. "_A caput mortuum_, Deacon! _defuncta!_ the wick of vitality is snuffed out." The bereaved husband groaned deeply; the widow Dobble groaned an octave higher.