Thorne, believe me, when a man's heart is
sad--sad--sad to the core, a few words from a parson at the last
moment will never make it all right."

"May He have mercy on you, my friend!--if you will think of Him, and
look to Him, He will have mercy on you."

"Well--I will try, doctor; but would that it were all to do again.
You'll see to the old woman for my sake, won't you?"

"What, Lady Scatcherd?"

"Lady Devil! If anything angers me now it is that 'ladyship'--her to
be my lady! Why, when I came out of jail that time, the poor creature
had hardly a shoe to her foot. But it wasn't her fault, Thorne; it
was none of her doing. She never asked for such nonsense."

"She has been an excellent wife, Scatcherd; and what is more, she
is an excellent woman. She is, and ever will be, one of my dearest
friends."

"Thank'ee, doctor, thank'ee. Yes; she has been a good wife--better
for a poor man than a rich one; but then, that was what she was born
to. You won't let her be knocked about by them, will you, Thorne?"

Dr Thorne again assured him, that as long as he lived Lady Scatcherd
should never want one true friend; in making this promise, however,
he managed to drop all allusion to the obnoxious title.

"You'll be with him as much as possible, won't you?" again asked the
baronet, after lying quite silent for a quarter of an hour.

"With whom?" said the doctor, who was then all but asleep.

"With my poor boy; with Louis."

"If he will let me, I will," said the doctor.

"And, doctor, when you see a glass at his mouth, dash it down; thrust
it down, though you thrust out the teeth with it. When you see that,
Thorne, tell him of his father--tell him what his father might have
been but for that; tell him how his father died like a beast, because
he could not keep himself from drink."

These, reader, were the last words spoken by Sir Roger Scatcherd. As
he uttered them he rose up in bed with the same vehemence which he
had shown on the former evening. But in the very act of doing so
he was again struck by paralysis, and before nine on the following
morning all was over.

"Oh, my man--my own, own man!" exclaimed the widow, remembering in
the paroxysm of her grief nothing but the loves of their early days;
"the best, the brightest, the cleverest of them all!"

Some weeks after this Sir Roger was buried, with much pomp and
ceremony, within the precincts of Barchester Cathedral; and a
monument was put up to him soon after,