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