ack to the fire, asked for his muffler and horse; and so took
his leave also of the weird sisters, who were still pottering about the
body, with croak and whisper, and nod and ogle. He took his leave also
of good Mrs. Julaper, who was completing arrangements with teapot and
kettle, spiced elderberry wine, and other comforts, to support them
through their proposed vigil. And finally, in a sort of way, he took his
leave of the body, with a long business-like stare, from the foot of the
bed, with his short hands stuffed into his pockets. And so, to Mrs.
Julaper's relief, this unseemly doctor, speaking thickly, departed.

And now, the Doctor being gone, and all things prepared for the 'wake'
to be observed by withered Mrs. Bligh of the one eye, and yellow Mrs.
Wale of the crooked back, the house grew gradually still. The thunder
had by this time died into the solid boom of distant battle, and the
fury of the gale had subsided to the long sobbing wail that is charged
with so eerie a melancholy. Within all was stirless, and the two old
women, each a 'Mrs.' by courtesy, who had not much to thank Nature or
the world for, sad and cynical, and in a sort outcasts told off by
fortune to these sad and grizzly services, sat themselves down by the
fire, each perhaps feeling unusually at home in the other's society; and
in this soured and forlorn comfort, trimming their fire, quickening the
song of the kettle to a boil, and waxing polite and chatty; each
treating the other with that deprecatory and formal courtesy which
invites a return in kind, and both growing strangely happy in this
little world of their own, in the unusual and momentary sense of an
importance and consideration which were delightful.

The old still-room of Mardykes Hall is an oblong room wainscoted. From
the door you look its full length to the wide stone-shafted Tudor window
at the other end. At your left is the ponderous mantelpiece, supported
by two spiral stone pillars; and close to the door at the right was the
bed in which the two crones had just stretched poor Philip Feltram, who
lay as still as an uncoloured wax-work, with a heavy penny-piece on each
eye, and a bandage under his jaw, making his mouth look stern. And the
two old ladies over their tea by the fire conversed agreeably, compared
their rheumatisms and other ailments wordily, and talked of old times,
and early recollections, and of sick-beds they had attended, and corpses
that "you would not know,