let me see him!"

"I must speak to the doctor."

"Do it instantly!"

With the will in his hand, Mr. Marchwood advanced to the bedroom door.
It was opened from within before he could get to it. The doctor appeared
on the threshold. He held up his hand warningly when Mr. Marchwood
attempted to speak to him.

"Go to Lady Holchester," he said. "It's all over."

"Dead?"

"Dead."

SIXTEENTH SCENE.--SALT PATCH.

CHAPTER THE FORTY-EIGHTH.

THE PLACE.

EARLY in the present century it was generally reported among the
neighbors of one Reuben Limbrick that he was in a fair way to make a
comfortable little fortune by dealing in Salt.

His place of abode was in Staffordshire, on a morsel of freehold land
of his own--appropriately called Salt Patch. Without being absolutely
a miser, he lived in the humblest manner, saw very little company;
skillfully invested his money; and persisted in remaining a single man.

Toward eighteen hundred and forty he first felt the approach of the
chronic malady which ultimately terminated his life. After trying what
the medical men of his own locality could do for him, with very poor
success, he met by accident with a doctor living in the western
suburbs of London, who thoroughly understood his complaint. After some
journeying backward and forward to consult this gentleman, he decided
on retiring from business, and on taking up his abode within an easy
distance of his medical man.

Finding a piece of freehold land to be sold in the neighborhood of
Fulham, he bought it, and had a cottage residence built on it, under his
own directions. He surrounded the whole--being a man singularly jealous
of any intrusion on his retirement, or of any chance observation of his
ways and habits--with a high wall, which cost a large sum of money,
and which was rightly considered a dismal and hideous object by the
neighbors. When the new residence was completed, he called it after
the name of the place in Staffordshire where he had made his money,
and where he had lived during the happiest period of his life. His
relatives, failing to understand that a question of sentiment was
involved in this proceeding, appealed to hard facts, and reminded him
that there were no salt mines in the neighborhood. Reuben Limbrick
answered, "So much the worse for the neighborhood"--and persisted in
calling his property, "Salt Patch."

The cottage was so small that it looked quite lost in the large garden
all roun