the bench.

There was perfect stillness in the room; she heard only the drip from
the tap of the brandy-cask down into the dish beneath, and saw, through
the half-open door to the inner room, Mrs. Selvig and her two daughters
bustling about on tiptoe.

A young man in spectacles entered. He asked a few rapid questions, while
he opened a case of instruments on the counter at the feet of the
prostrate figure. He listened at its chest with the stethoscope and
without it, and shook his head, pulled out a lancet, and pushed the
shirt sleeve up the hanging arm.

"Hold the sleeve, so that it doesn't slip down!" he said with a glance
up at Silla; he took her to be a member of the household.

The lancet pierced and pierced again. The ashen grey face of the girl
looked into his, as if she would beg him for only one drop of that which
was the life.

There came out something like a thick, dark syrup.

He listened again, felt again; one more trial with the lancet, and it
was with an air of superiority, and a mouth drawn up like his
professor's, that the young bachelor of medicine turned to those
assembled and pronounced his concise verdict:

"Stone dead! The man's stone dead!--from drink!"

His words were followed by a cry from Silla, who threw herself upon her
father.

"Is that his daughter?" asked the young doctor. He carefully wiped his
lancet at the light, and put his instruments together preparatory to
going, but gazed at the same time over his spectacles at her. Heedless
of everything, she cried incessantly over the body.

"You aren't dead, are you, father? Father!"

It was a wild sorrow, without consideration or bashfulness, and the
young doctor felt that he was witnessing an unpleasant scene from life
in the outskirts of the town. He had done his duty and hastened out.

A twenty-year-old workshop apprentice, pale and overcome, was standing
behind Silla, trying to recall her to herself. He took her by the
shoulder, and whispered repeatedly, as loudly as respect for the dead
would allow:

"Silla! Silla! don't you hear? It's me--Nikolai!"

And he tried in vain two or three times to lift her up from the body.

Meanwhile a policeman stood and examined Mrs. Selvig and the girls. He
made notes, and took down the particulars of the death.

Just finished his usual quantity, a bottle of ale and four drams. The
girl at the bar saw him quickly stretch out his hand--had the impression
that he wanted another dram--and w