e divided
between genial welcome and surly wrath. 'It'll be the end of me. Pooh!
who doesn't know that such a thing is fatal at my age? Blood-poisoning
has fairly begun. I'd a good deal rather have broken my neck among
honest lumps of old red sandstone. A nail! A damned Brummagem nail!--So
you collared the first prize in geology, eh? I take that as a kindness,
Godwin. You've got a bit beyond Figuier and his _Deluge_, eh? His
Deluge, bah!'

And he laughed discordantly. On the other side of the bed sat Mrs
Gunnery, grizzled and feeble dame. Shaken into the last stage of
senility by this alarm, she wiped tears from her flaccid cheeks, and
moaned a few unintelligible words.

The geologist's forecast of doom was speedily justified. Another day
bereft him of consciousness, and when, for a short while, he had
rambled among memories of his youth, the end came. It was found that he
had made a will, bequeathing his collections and scientific instruments
to Godwin Peak: his books were to be sold for the benefit of the widow,
who would enjoy an annuity purchased out of her husband's savings. The
poor old woman, as it proved, had little need of income; on the
thirteenth day after Mr. Gunnery's funeral, she too was borne forth
from the house, and the faithful couple slept together.

To inherit from the dead was an impressive experience to Godwin. At the
present stage of his development, every circumstance affecting him
started his mind upon the quest of reasons, symbolisms, principles; the
'natural supernatural' had hold upon him, and ruled his thought
whenever it was free from the spur of arrogant instinct. This tendency
had been strengthened by the influence of his friend Earwaker, a young
man of singularly complex personality, positive and analytic in a far
higher degree than Peak, yet with a vein of imaginative vigour which
seemed to befit quite a different order of mind. Godwin was not
distinguished by originality in thinking, but his strongly featured
character converted to uses of his own the intellectual suggestions he
so rapidly caught from others. Earwaker's habit of reflection had much
to do with the strange feelings awakened in Godwin when he transferred
to his mother's house the cabinets which had been Mr. Gunnery's pride
for thirty or forty years. Joy of possession was subdued in him by the
conflict of metaphysical questionings.

Days went on, and nothing was heard of Uncle Andrew. Godwin tried to
assure himself th