ure, and opened the window, to the universal
horror. I intimated the death scene was postponed, and, as a matter of
fact, my uncle did not die until the next night.

I did not let the little clergyman come near him again, and I was
watchful for any sign that his mind had been troubled. But he made none.
He talked once about "that parson chap."

"Didn't bother you?" I asked.

"Wanted something," he said.

I kept silence, listening keenly to his mutterings. I understood him to
say, "They wanted too much." His face puckered like a child's going to
cry. "You can't get a safe six per cent.," he said. I had for a moment
a wild suspicion that those urgent talks had not been altogether
spiritual, but that, I think, was a quite unworthy and unjust suspicion.
The little clergyman was as simple and honest as the day. My uncle was
simply generalising about his class.

But it may have been these talks that set loose some long dormant string
of ideas in my uncle's brain, ideas the things of this world had long
suppressed and hidden altogether. Near the end he suddenly became
clearminded and lucid, albeit very weak, and his voice was little, but
clear.

"George," he said.

"I'm here," I said, "close beside you."

"George. You have always been responsible for the science. George. You
know better than I do. Is--Is it proved?"

"What proved?"

"Either way?"

"I don't understand."

"Death ends all. After so much--Such splendid beginnin's. Somewhere.
Something."

I stared at him amazed. His sunken eyes were very grave.

"What do you expect?" I said in wonder.

He would not answer. "Aspirations," he whispered. He fell into a broken
monologue, regardless of me. "Trailing clouds of glory," he said, and
"first-rate poet, first-rate....George was always hard. Always."

For a long time there was silence.

Then he made a gesture that he wished to speak.

"Seems to me, George"

I bent my head down, and he tried to lift his hand to my shoulder. I
raised him a little on his pillows, and listened.

"It seems to me, George, always--there must be something in me--that
won't die."

He looked at me as though the decision rested with me.

"I think," he said; "--something."

Then, for a moment, his mind wandered. "Just a little link," he
whispered almost pleadingly, and lay quite still, but presently he was
uneasy again.

"Some other world"

"Perhaps," I said. "Who knows?"

"Some other world."

"Not the same scope for