y tones of that one
well-remembered voice, how many glimpses of the form, the fluttering
dress, the hair that waved so gaily in the wind--how many visions of
what had been, and what he hoped was yet to be--rose up before him, in
the old, dull, silent church! He never told them what he thought, or
where he went. He would sit with them at night, pondering with a
secret satisfaction, they could see, upon the flight that he and she
would take before night came again; and still they would hear him
whisper in his prayers, 'Lord! Let her come to-morrow!'

The last time was on a genial day in spring. He did not return at the
usual hour, and they went to seek him. He was lying dead upon the
stone.

They laid him by the side of her whom he had loved so well; and, in the
church where they had often prayed, and mused, and lingered hand in
hand, the child and the old man slept together.

CHAPTER 73

The magic reel, which, rolling on before, has led the chronicler thus
far, now slackens in its pace, and stops. It lies before the goal; the
pursuit is at an end.

It remains but to dismiss the leaders of the little crowd who have
borne us company upon the road, and so to close the journey.

Foremost among them, smooth Sampson Brass and Sally, arm in arm, claim
our polite attention.

Mr Sampson, then, being detained, as already has been shown, by the
justice upon whom he called, and being so strongly pressed to protract
his stay that he could by no means refuse, remained under his
protection for a considerable time, during which the great attention of
his entertainer kept him so extremely close, that he was quite lost to
society, and never even went abroad for exercise saving into a small
paved yard. So well, indeed, was his modest and retiring temper
understood by those with whom he had to deal, and so jealous were they
of his absence, that they required a kind of friendly bond to be
entered into by two substantial housekeepers, in the sum of fifteen
hundred pounds a-piece, before they would suffer him to quit their
hospitable roof--doubting, it appeared, that he would return, if once
let loose, on any other terms. Mr Brass, struck with the humour of
this jest, and carrying out its spirit to the utmost, sought from his
wide connection a pair of friends whose joint possessions fell some
halfpence short of fifteen pence, and proffered them as bail--for that
was the merry word agreed upon both sides. These gentlemen