the
tempest without, and the peals of thunder that echoed awfully above,
like the chorus of a melancholy ballad--the sudden clang of the
hall-door bell, and a more faintly-heard knocking, announced a new
arrival.

[Illustration: "I sid something white come out o' t' water, by the
gunwale, like a hand."]

CHAPTER XI

Sir Bale's Dream

It was Doctor Torvey who entered the old still-room now, buttoned-up to
the chin in his greatcoat, and with a muffler of many colours wrapped
partly over that feature.

"Well!--hey? So poor Feltram's had an accident?"

The Doctor was addressing Sir Bale, and getting to the bedside as he
pulled off his gloves.

"I see you've been keeping him warm--that's right; and a considerable
flow of water from his mouth; turn him a little that way. Hey? O, ho!"
said the Doctor, as he placed his hand upon Philip, and gently stirred
his limbs. "It's more than an hour since this happened. I'm afraid
there's very little to be done now;" and in a lower tone, with his hand
on poor Philip Feltram's arm, and so down to his fingers, he said in Sir
Bale Mardykes' ear, with a shake of his head,

"Here, you see, poor fellow, here's the cadaveric stiffness; it's very
melancholy, but it's all over, he's gone; there's no good trying any
more. Come here, Mrs. Julaper. Did you ever see any one dead? Look at
his eyes, look at his mouth. You ought to have known that, with half an
eye. And you know," he added again confidentially in Sir Bale's ear,
"trying any more _now_ is all my eye."

Then after a few more words with the Baronet, and having heard his
narrative, he said from time to time, "Quite right; nothing could be
better; capital practice, sir," and so forth. And at the close of all
this, amid the sobs of kind Mrs. Julaper and the general whimpering of
the humbler handmaids, the Doctor standing by the bed, with his knuckles
on the coverlet, and a glance now and then on the dead face beside him,
said--by way of 'quieting men's minds,' as the old tract-writers used to
say--a few words to the following effect:

"Everything has been done here that the most experienced physician could
have wished. Everything has been done in the best way. I don't know
anything that has not been done, in fact. If I had been here myself, I
don't know--hot bricks--salt isn't a bad thing. I don't know, I say,
that anything of any consequence has been omitted." And looking at the
body, "You see," and he drew the fingers