The doctor advanced to the bedside.--"You will excuse me for retaining my hat and this kerchief about my neck," he said in his mild voice, "I am suffering from a severe cold." He then directed his attention to the sick man, while Gulian and Tarleton watched his movements, with evident interest. The doctor did not touch the merchant; he stood by the bedside, gazing upon him silently. "What's the matter with our friend?" whispered Tarleton. The doctor did not answer. He remained motionless by the bedside, surveying the quivering features and fixed eyes of the afflicted man. "This person," exclaimed the doctor, after a long pause, "is not suffering from a physical complaint. His mind is afflicted. From the talk of the servants in the hall, I learned that he has this night lost his only son, by the hands of a murderer. The shock has been too great for him. My young friend," he addressed Gulian, who stood at his back, "it were as well to send for a clergyman." Gulian hurried to the door, and whispered to the housekeeper. Returning to the bedside, he found the doctor seated in a chair, with a watch in his hand, in full view of the delirious man. The Colonel, grasping the bed-curtain, stood behind him, in an attitude of profound thought, yet with a faint smile upon his lips. As for the merchant prince, seated bolt upright in the bed, he clutched the golden eagle, (which seemed to have _magnetized_ his gaze), and babbled in his delirium-- "_You_ an heir of Trinity Church?" he said, with a mocking smile upon his thin lips, "_you_ one of the descendants of Anreke Jans Bogardus? Pooh! Pooh! The Church is firm,--_firm_. She defies you. Aaron Burr tried that game, he! he! and found it best to quit,--to quit--to quit. What Trinity Church has got, she will hold,--hold--hold. She buys,--she sells--she sells--she buys--a great business man is Trinity Church! And with your two hundred beggarly heirs of Anreke Jans Bogardus, you will go to law about her title. Pooh!" "He is going fast," whispered the Doctor, "his mind is killing him. Where are his relatives?" His relatives! Sad, sad word! His wife had been dead many years, and her relatives were at a distance; perchance in a foreign land. His _nearest_ relative was a corpse, up-stairs, with a pistol wound through his heart. Evelyn Somers, Sen., was one of the richest men in New York, and yet there was not a single relative to stand by his dying-bed. The death-sweat on his fevered brow, the whiteness of death on his quivering lips, the fire of the grave in his expanding eyes, Evelyn Somers, the merchant prince, had neither wife nor child nor relative to stand by him in his last hour. The poor boy who wept by the bed-side was, perchance, his only friend. "Cornelius Berman, the artist, (who died, I believe, some years ago,) was his only relative in New York: his only son out of view." This was the answer of Colonel Tarleton, to the question of the Doctor.