have consented to, or instigated (for it was not quite evident how far his
concurrence had gone) this poor girl's scheme of going and brooding over
her lover's grave, and living in close contiguity with the man who had
slain him. The doctor had not much to say for himself on this point; but
there was found reason to believe that he was acting in the interest of
some English claimant of a great estate that was left without an apparent
heir by the death of Cyril Norton, and there was even a suspicion that he,
with his fantastic science and antiquated empiricism, had been at the
bottom of the scheme of poisoning, which was so strangely intertwined with
Septimius's notion, in which he went so nearly crazed, of a drink of
immortality. It was observable, however, that the doctor--such a humbug in
scientific matters, that he had perhaps bewildered himself--seemed to have
a sort of faith in the efficacy of the recipe which had so strangely come
to light, provided the true flower could be discovered; but that flower,
according to Doctor Portsoaken, had not been seen on earth for many
centuries, and was banished probably forever. The flower, or fungus, which
Septimius had mistaken for it, was a sort of earthly or devilish
counterpart of it, and was greatly in request among the old poisoners for
its admirable uses in their art. In fine, no tangible evidence being found
against the worthy doctor, he was permitted to depart, and disappeared
from the neighborhood, to the scandal of many people, unhanged; leaving
behind him few available effects beyond the web and empty skin of an
enormous spider.

As to Septimius, he returned no more to his cottage by the wayside, and
none undertook to tell what had become of him; crushed and annihilated, as
it were, by the failure of his magnificent and most absurd dreams. Rumors
there have been, however, at various times, that there had appeared an
American claimant, who had made out his right to the great estate of
Smithell's Hall, and had dwelt there, and left posterity, and that in the