brain. But the thing that did free me was the reflection with what
supreme disregard the disincarcerated spirit would look upon any possible
vicissitudes of its abandoned vault. For in proportion as the body of man's
revelation ceases to be in harmony with the spirit that dwells therein,
it becomes a vault, a prison, from which it must be freedom to escape at
length. The house we like best would be a prison of awful sort if doors and
windows were built up. Man's abode, as age begins to draw nigh, fares thus.
Age is in fact the mason that builds up the doors and the windows, and
death is the angel that breaks the prison-house and lets the captives free.
Thus I got something out of the sexton's horrible story.

But before the week was over, death came near indeed--in far other fashion
than any funereal tale could have brought it.

One day, after lunch, I had retired to my study, and was dozing in my
chair, for the day was hot, when I was waked by Charlie rushing into the
room with the cry, "Papa, papa, there's a man drowning."

I started up, and hurried down to the drawing-room, which looked out over
the bay. I could see nothing but people running about on the edge of the
quiet waves. No sign of human being was on--the water. But the one boat
belonging to the pilot was coming out from the shelter of the lock of the
canal where it usually lay, and my friend of the coastguard was running
down from the tower on the cliff with ropes in his hand. He would not stop
the boat even for the moment it would need to take him on board, but threw
them in and urged to haste. I stood at the window and watched. Every now
and then I fancied I saw something white heaved up on the swell of a wave,
and as often was satisfied that I had but fancied it. The boat seemed to be
floating about lazily, if not idly. The eagerness to help made it appear as
if nothing was going on. Could it, after all, have been a false alarm? Was