mounted flight after flight towards the garret floor, I heard
more and more distinctly the hurried talking of many voices. I could also
distinguish the low sobbing of a female. On arriving upon the uppermost
lobby, these sounds became fully audible.

"This way, your honor," said my little conductress, at the same time
pushing open a door of patched and half rotten plank, she admitted me
into the squalid chamber of death and misery. But one candle, held in the
fingers of a scared and haggard-looking child, was burning in the room,
and that so dim that all was twilight or darkness except within its
immediate influence. The general obscurity, however, served to throw into
prominent and startling relief the death-bed and its occupant. The light
was nearly approximated to, and fell with horrible clearness upon, the
blue and swollen features of the drunkard. I did not think it possible
that a human countenance could look so terrific. The lips were black and
drawn apart--the teeth were firmly set--the eyes a little unclosed, and
nothing but the whites appearing--every feature was fixed and livid, and
the whole face wore a ghastly and rigid expression of despairing terror
such as I never saw equalled; his hands were crossed upon his breast, and
firmly clenched, while, as if to add to the corpse-like effect of the
whole, some white cloths, dipped in water, were wound about the forehead
and temples. As soon as I could remove my eyes from this horrible
spectacle, I observed my friend Dr. D----, one of the most humane of a
humane profession, standing by the bedside. He had been attempting, but
unsuccessfully, to bleed the patient, and had now applied his finger to
the pulse.

"Is there any hope?" I inquired in a whisper.

A shake of the head was the reply. There was a pause while he continued
to hold the wrist; but he waited in vain for the throb of life, it was
not there, and when he let go the hand it fell stiffly back into its
former position upon the other.

"The man is dead," said the physician, as he turned from the bed where
the terrible figure lay.

Dead! thought I, scarcely venturing to look upon the tremendous and
revolting spectacle--dead! without an hour for repentance, even a
moment for reflection--dead! without the rites which even the best
should have. Is there a hope for him? The glaring eyeball, the grinning
mouth, the distorted brow--that unutterable look in which a painter
would have sought to embody the fi