sum of evil which awaited me. Little Francis--she took up her tale at
that point--'was with God:' so she expressed herself. He had died of
the same fever which had attacked me--had died and been buried nearly
five weeks before. Too probably he had caught the infection from me.
Almost--such are the caprices of human feeling--almost I could have
rejoiced that this young memorial of my vanished happiness had vanished
also. It gave me a pang, nevertheless, that the grave should thus have
closed upon him before I had seen his fair little face again. But I
steeled my heart to hear worse things than this. Next she went on to
inform me that already, on the first or second day of our calamity, she
had taken upon herself, without waiting for authority, on observing the
rapid approaches of illness in me, and arguing the state of
helplessness which would follow, to write off at once a summons in the
most urgent terms to the brother of my wife. This gentleman, whom I
shall call Pierpoint, was a high-spirited, generous young man as I have
ever known. When I say that he was a sportsman, that at one season of
the year he did little else than pursue his darling amusement of fox-
hunting, for which indeed he had almost a maniacal passion--saying
this, I shall already have prejudged him in the opinions of many, who
fancy all such persons the slaves of corporeal enjoyments. But, with
submission, the truth lies the other way. According to my experience,
people of these habits have their bodies more than usually under their
command, as being subdued by severe exercise; and their minds, neither
better nor worse on an average than those of their neighbors, are more
available from being so much more rarely clogged by morbid habits in
that uneasy yoke-fellow of the intellectual part--the body. He at all
events was a man to justify in his own person this way of thinking; for
he was a man not only of sound, but even of bold and energetic
intellect, and in all moral respects one whom any man might feel proud
to call his friend. This young man, Pierpoint, without delay obeyed the