and weariness, he fell asleep.

The March rain pelted him mercilessly, the beaded moisture from the
heavily charged locks of heath penetrated him through back and sides, and
clotted his hair to unsightly tags and tufts. When he awoke it was dark.
He thought of his grandmother, and of her possible alarm at missing him.
On attempting to rise, he found that he could hardly bend his joints, and
that his clothes were as heavy as lead from saturation. His teeth
chattering and his knees trembling he pursued his way home, where his
appearance excited great concern. He was obliged at once to retire to
bed, and the next day he was delirious from the chill.

It was about ten days after this unhappy occurrence that Lady Constantine
learnt the news, as above described, and hastened along to the homestead
in that state of anguish in which the heart is no longer under the
control of the judgment, and self-abandonment even to error, verges on
heroism.

On reaching the house in Welland Bottom the door was opened to her by old
Hannah, who wore an assiduously sorrowful look; and Lady Constantine was
shown into the large room,--so wide that the beams bent in the
middle,--where she took her seat in one of a methodic range of chairs,
beneath a portrait of the Reverend Mr. St. Cleeve, her astronomer's
erratic father.

The eight unwatered dying plants, in the row of eight flower-pots,
denoted that there was something wrong in the house. Mrs. Martin came
downstairs fretting, her wonder at beholding Lady Constantine not
altogether displacing the previous mood of grief.

'Here's a pretty kettle of fish, my lady!' she exclaimed.

Lady Constantine said, 'Hush!' and pointed inquiringly upward.

'He is not overhead, my lady,' replied Swithin's grandmother. 'His
bedroom is at the back of the house.'

'How is he now?'

'He is better, just at this moment; and we are more hopeful. But he
changes so.'

'May I go up? I know he would like to see me.'

Her presence having been made known to the sufferer, she was conducted
upstairs to Swithin's room. The way thither was through the large
chamber he had used as a study and for the manufacture of optical
instruments. There lay the large pasteboard telescope, that had been
just such a failure as Crusoe's large boat; there were his diagrams,
maps, globes, and celestial apparatus of various sorts. The absence of
the worker, through illness or death is sufficient to touch the prosiest
works