eth
in a great effort. Then suddenly he collapsed and lay still. He was
dead."

I could not help thinking of the force and energy--able at the last
minute, when he could not speak--to "grit his teeth" and "fight," a
minute before his death. What is the human spirit, or mind, that it can
fight so, to the very last? I felt as though some one, something, had
ruthlessly killed him, committed plain, unpunished murder--nothing more
and nothing less.

And there were his cases of curios, his rug, his prints, his dishes, his
many, many schemes, his book to come out soon. I gazed and marveled. I
looked at his wife and babies, but could say nothing. It spelled, what
such things always spell, in the face of all our dreams, crass chance or
the willful, brutal indifference of Nature to all that relates to man.
If he is to prosper he must do so without her aid.

That same night, sleeping in the room adjoining that in which was the
body, a pale candle burning near it, I felt as though Peter were walking
to and fro, to and fro, past me and into the room of his wife beyond,
thinking and grieving. His imagined wraith seemed horribly depressed
and distressed. Once he came over and moved his hand (something) over my
face. I felt him walking into the room where were his wife and kiddies,
but he could make no one see, hear, understand. I got up and looked at
his _cadaver_ a long time, then went to bed again.

The next day and the next and the next were filled with many things. His
mother and sister came on from the West as well as the mother and
brother of his wife. I had to look after his affairs, adjusting the
matter of insurance which he left, his art objects, the burial of his
body "in consecrated ground" in Philadelphia, with the consent and aid
of the local Catholic parish rector, else no burial. His mother desired
it, but he had never been a good Catholic and there was trouble. The
local parish assistant refused me, even the rector. Finally I threatened
the good father with an appeal to the diocesan bishop on the ground of
plain common sense and courtesy to a Catholic family, if not charity to
a tortured mother and wife--and obtained consent. All along I felt as if
a great crime had been committed by some one, foul murder. I could not
get it out of my mind, and it made me angry, not sad.

Two, three, five, seven years later, I visited the little family in
Philadelphia. The wife was with her mother and father in a simple little
ho