“Eh!—Eh! Dear—Lord, Dear—Heart. Dear—Heart!” wailed the old woman. She hastened trembling round to the other side of the bed, and relit the extinguished candle at the taper which was still burning. As she returned, the light glowed on her old, wrinkled face, and on the burnished knobs of the dark mahogany bedstead, while a stream of wax dripped down on to the floor. By the glimmering light of the two tapers we could see the outlined form under the counterpane. She turned back the hem and began to make painful wailing sounds. My heart was beating heavily, and I felt choked. I did not want to look—but I must. It was the man I had seen in the woods—with the puffiness gone from his face. I felt the great wild pity, and a sense of terror, and a sense of horror, and a sense of awful littleness and loneliness among a great empty space. I felt beyond myself as if I were a mere fleck drifting unconsciously through the dark. Then I felt my mother’s arm round my shoulders, and she cried pitifully, “Oh, my son, my son!” I shivered, and came back to myself. There were no tears in my mother’s face, only a great pleading. “Never mind, mother—never mind,” I said incoherently. She rose and covered the face again, and went round to the old lady, and held her still, and stayed her little wailings. The woman wiped from her cheeks the few tears of old age, and pushed her grey hair smooth under the velvet network. “Where are all his things?” asked mother. “Eh?” said the old lady, lifting up her ear. “Are all his things here?” repeated mother in a louder tone. “Here?”—the woman waved her hand round the room. It contained the great mahogany bedstead naked of hangings, a desk, and an oak chest, and two or three mahogany chairs. “I couldn’t get him upstairs; he’s only been here about a three week.” “Where’s the key to the desk?” said my mother loudly in the woman’s ear. “Yes,” she replied—“it’s his desk.” She looked at us, perplexed and doubtful, fearing she had misunderstood us. This was dreadful. “Key!” I shouted. “Where is the key?” Her old face was full of trouble as she shook her head. I took it that she did not know. “Where are his clothes? _Clothes_” I repeated pointing to my coat. She understood, and muttered, “I’ll fetch ’em ye.” We should have followed her as she hurried upstairs through a door near the head of the bed, had we not heard a heavy footstep in the kitchen, and a voice saying: “Is the old lady going to drink with the Devil? Hullo, Mrs. May, come and drink with me!” We heard the tinkle of the liquor poured into a glass, and almost immediately the light tap of the empty tumbler on the table. “I’ll see what the old girl’s up to,” he said, and the heavy tread came towards us. Like me, he stumbled at the little step, but escaped collision with the table. “Damn that fool’s step,” he said heartily. It was the doctor—for he kept his hat on his head, and did not hesitate to stroll about the house. He was a big, burly, red-faced man.