drawn. A low fire burned gloomily in the sooty grate, and on the hob
hissed "the still small voice" of an iron kettle. On a round deal table
were two vials, a cracked cup, a broken spoon of some dull metal, and
upon two or three mutilated chairs were scattered various articles of
female attire. On another table, placed below a high, narrow,
shutterless casement (athwart which, instead of a curtain, a checked
apron had been loosely hung, and now waved fitfully to and fro in the
gusts of wind that made easy ingress through many a chink and cranny),
were a looking-glass, sundry appliances of the toilet, a box of coarse
rouge, a few ornaments of more show than value, and a watch, the regular
and calm click of which produced that indescribably painful feeling
which, we fear, many of our readers who have heard the sound in a
sick-chamber can easily recall. A large tester-bed stood opposite to
this table, and the looking-glass partially reflected curtains of a faded
stripe, and ever and anon (as the position of the sufferer followed the
restless emotion of a disordered mind) glimpses of the face of one on
whom Death was rapidly hastening. Beside this bed now stood Dummie, a
small, thin man dressed in a tattered plush jerkin, from which the
rain-drops slowly dripped, and with a thin, yellow, cunning physiognomy
grotesquely hideous in feature, but not positively villanous in
expression. On the other side of the bed stood a little boy of about
three years old, dressed as if belonging to the better classes, although
the garb was somewhat tattered and discoloured. The poor child trembled
violently, and evidently looked with a feeling of relief on the entrance
of Dummie. And now there slowly, and with many a phthisical sigh, heaved
towards the foot of the bed the heavy frame of the woman who had accosted
Dummie below, and had followed him, _haud passibus aequis_, to the room
of the sufferer; she stood with a bottle of medicine in her hand, shaking
its contents up and down, and with a kindly yet timid compassion spread
over a countenance crimsoned with habitual libations. This made the