nterest in
the present world, to which the daily visit of the doctor, and that
alone, connected them. He never failed to pay it. Unconscious of all
else, they never failed to look for it.

The village clock struck eleven as I walked up the avenue that
conducted to the house. The day was intensely hot, and at that early
hour the fierce fire of the sun had rendered the atmosphere sweltry
and oppressive. I knocked many times before I could obtain admittance,
and, at last, the door was opened by a ragged urchin about twelve
years of age, looking more like the son of a thief or a gypsy than a
juvenile member of the decent household.

"Is Dr. Mayhew at home?" I asked.

"Oh, I don't know!" he answered surlily; "you had better come and see;"
and therewith he turned upon his heel, and tramped heavily down the
kitchen stairs. For a few seconds I remained where I was. At length,
hearing no voices in the house, and finding that no one was likely
to come to me, I followed him. At the bottom of the stairs was a
long passage leading to the offices. It was very dark, or it was
rendered so to me who had just left the glare of noonday. At the end
of it, however, a small lamp glimmered, and under its feeble help I
advanced. Arriving at its extremity, I was stopped by the hum of many
voices that proceeded from a chamber on the right. Here I knocked
immediately. The voice of Dr. Mayhew desired me to enter. The door
was opened the moment afterwards, and then I beheld the doctor
himself and every servant of the house assembled in a crowd. The
little boy who had given me admission was in the group; and in the
very centre of all, sitting upright in a chair, was the strangest
apparition of a man that I have ever gazed upon, before or since. The
object that attracted, and at the same time repelled, my notice, was
a creature whose age no living man could possibly determine. He was
at least six feet high, with raven hair, and a complexion sallow as
the sear leaf. Look at his figure, then mark the absence of a single
wrinkle, and you judge him for a youth. Observe again: look at the
emaciated face; note the jet-black eye, deeply-sunken, and void of
all fire and life; the crushed, the vacant, and forlorn expression;
the aquiline nose, prominent as an eagle's, from which the parchment
skin is drawn as rigidly as though it were a dead man's skin,
bloodless and inert. The wear and tear, the buffeting and misery of
seventy years are there. Seventy!--