was partially distorted, as by convulsion or paralysis; but not
sufficiently so to destroy that remarkable expression of loftiness and
severity which had characterized the features in life. At the same time
the distortion which had drawn up on one side the muscles of the mouth
had deepened into a startling broadness the half sneer of derision that
usually lurked around the lower part of his face. Thus unwitnessed and
abrupt had been the disunion of the clay and spirit of a man who, if he
passed through life a bold, scheming, stubborn, unwavering hypocrite, was
not without something high even amidst his baseness, his selfishness, and
his vices; who seemed less to have loved sin than by some strange
perversion of reason to have disdained virtue, and who, by a solemn and
awful suddenness of fate (for who shall venture to indicate the judgment
of the arch and unseen Providence, even when it appears to mortal eye the
least obscured?), won the dreams, the objects, the triumphs of hope, to
be blasted by them at the moment of acquisition!





CHAPTER XXXVI.

AND LAST.

Subtle, Surly,--Mammon, Dol,
Hot Ananias, Dapper, Dragger,--all
With whom I traded.
The Alchemist.

As when some rural citizen-retired for a fleeting holiday, far from the