med to grow
strong for a while, and then to fall into sleep, deep and prolonged.

After more days--or weeks, I began to behold marvels and to hear strange
voices. I thought that I was talking with my mother and with my patron,
St. Hubert; also that Blanche came to me and explained everything,
showing how little she had been to blame for all that had happened to me
and her. These things made me certain that I was dead and I was glad to
be dead, since now I knew there would be no more pain or strivings; that
the endeavours which make up life from hour to hour had ceased and
that rest was won. Only then appeared my uncle, John Grimmer, who kept
quoting his favourite text at me--"Vanity of vanities. All is vanity,"
he said, adding: "Did I not tell you that it was thus years ago? Now you
have learned it for yourself. Only, Nephew Hubert, don't think that you
have finished with vanities yet, as I have, for I say that there are
plenty more to come for you."

Thus he seemed to talk on about this and other matters, such as what
would happen to his wealth and whether the hospitals would be quick
to seize the lands to which he had given it the reversion, till I grew
quite tired of him and wished that he would go away.

Then at length there was a great crash that I think disturbed him,
for he did go, saying that it was only another "vanity," after which I
seemed to fall asleep for weeks and weeks.

I woke up again for a warmth and brightness on my face caused me to open
my eyes. I lifted my hand to shield them from the brightness and noted
with a kind of wonder that it was so thin that the light shone through
it as it does through parchment, and that the bones were visible beneath
the skin. I let it fall from weakness, and it dropped on to hair which I
knew must be that of a beard, which set me wondering, for it had been my
fashion to go clean-shaven. How, then, did I come by a beard? I looked
about me and saw that I was lying on the deck of a ship, yes, of the
_Blanche_ itself, for I knew the shape of her stern, also certain knots
in one of the uprights of the deck-house that formed a rude resemblance
to a human face. Nothing of this deck-house was left now, except the
corner posts between which I lay, and to the tops of these was lashed a
piece of canvas as though to keep off the sun and the weather.

With difficulty I lifted my head a little and looked about me. The
bulwarks of the ship had gone, but some of the uprights to