bout the best way of taking the money. I am afraid there is
nothing for it but gold, and this will be a great weight for you to
carry--about, I believe 36 lbs. Can you do this? I really think that if
you lead your horse you . . . no--there will be the getting him down
again--"

"Don't worry about it, my dear father," said I, "I can do it easily if I
stow the load rightly, and I will see to this. I shall have nothing else
to carry, for I shall camp down below both morning and evening. But
would you not like to send some present to the Mayor, Yram, their other
children, and Mrs. Humdrum's grand-daughter?"

"Do what you can," said my father. And these were the last instructions
he gave me about those adventures with which alone this work is
concerned.

The day before he died, he had a little flicker of intelligence, but all
of a sudden his face became clouded as with great anxiety; he seemed to
see some horrible chasm in front of him which he had to cross, or which
he feared that I must cross, for he gasped out words, which, as near as I
could catch them, were, "Look out! John! Leap! Leap! Le . . . " but
he could not say all that he was trying to say and closed his eyes,
having, as I then deemed, seen that he was on the brink of that gulf
which lies between life and death; I took it that in reality he died at
that moment; for there was neither struggle, nor hardly movement of any
kind afterwards--nothing but a pulse which for the next several hours
grew fainter and fainter so gradually, that it was not till some time
after it had ceased to beat that we were certain of its having done so.

CHAPTER XXVII: I MEET MY BROTHER GEORGE AT THE STATUES, ON THE TOP OF THE
PASS INTO EREWHON

This book has already become longer than I intended, but I will ask the
reader to have patience while I tell him briefly of my own visit to the
threshold of that strange country of which I fear that he may be already
beginning to tire.

The winding-up of my father's estate was a very simple matter, and by the
beginning of September 1891 I should have been free to start; but about
that time I became engaged, and naturally enough I did not want to be
longer away than was necessary. I should not have gone at all if I could
have helped it. I left, however, a fortnight later than my father had
done.

Before starting I bought a handsome gold repeater for the Mayor, and a
brooch for Yram, of pearls and diamonds set in gold, fo