ts were crude allegorical representations of
Life and Death. The books were full of the violent polemic of the
Reformation. A flowerpot stood on the window-sill; perhaps ten years ago
it had had a flower in it, but now it held the apothecary's empty
phials. Everything proclaimed the room tenantless.

Skelton walked to the bed and looked down upon it with profound
curiosity. Only the head lay above the coverlet; withered and shrunken
it was, yet the brow was high, and it was plain that the features had
been fine and strong, betokening the once keen and sensitive
nerve--there was nothing sensitive now; all thought and feeling had for
ever fled. The half-shut lids disclosed the vacant eyes; the hair lay
clammy and matted on the wrinkled brow; there was nothing of life left
but the breath.

'It's my opinion, sir, that he'll live out his natural time. It's a
theory of mine that we are all born with a certain length of life in us,
and, barring accident, that time we'll live. Well, of course this man
had the accident of his stroke, which by rights ought to have done for
him, but by some fluke he weathered it, and now he'll live out his time.
If one could find out his ancestors and see how long they each lived,
with a little calculation I could tell you how long he'd lie there.'
With that the apothecary poked his patient in the cheek, and jerked him
by the arm, to show Skelton how completely consciousness was gone. He
would have treated a corpse with more respect: the lowest of us has some
reverence for death.

Just then the door, which had been left ajar, was pushed open, and a
slight, sweet-faced woman came in from the street. She was evidently a
district Bible-reader, but, although perceiving that she had entered a
house where she was not needed, she advanced as far as the bed and
looked down upon it with a passion of tenderness and pity depicted on
her face.

'Bless you, mum, he ain't suff'ring,' said the apothecary.

'I was thinking of his soul, not of his body,' she said. 'I was
wondering if he had been prepared to meet his Creator.'

'Where do you suppose his soul is?' asked Skelton curiously. He asked
the question in all reverence; she was not a lady apparently, only a
working woman, but there was about her the strong majesty of a noble
life.

'He is not dead yet,' she replied with evident astonishment.

'Lor, mum,' said the apothecary, 'his brain ain't in working order just
at present, and as for his spirit a