ble that he would have lived some months,
possibly some years longer, had not the evil spirit of covetousness
conspired to heighten the malady that wasted his physical frame. As it
was, the sands of life were running low; and the skilful Dr. Sage,
himself, had admitted to Mary the improbability that her uncle and
protector could long survive.

It is wonderful how the interest in a rich man suddenly revives among his
relatives and possible heirs, as his last hour draws near. Deacon Pratt
was known to be wealthy in a small way; was thought to possess his thirty
or forty thousand dollars, which was regarded as wealth among the
east-enders thirty years since; and every human being in Old Suffolk,
whether of its overwhelming majority or of its more select and wiser
minority, who could by legal possibility claim any right to be remembered
by the dying man, crowded around his bed-side. At that moment, Mary Pratt,
who had so long nursed his diseases and mitigated his sufferings, was
compelled to appear as a very insignificant and secondary person. Others
who stood in the same degree of consanguinity to the dying man, and two, a
brother and sister, who were even one degree closer, had _their_ claims,
and were by no means disposed to suffer them to be forgotten. Gladly would
poor Mary have prayed by her uncle's bed-side; but Parson Whittle had
assumed this solemn duty, it being deemed proper that one who had so long
tilled the office of deacon, should depart with a proper attention to the
usages of his meeting. Some of the relatives who had lately appeared, and
who were not so conversant with the state of things between the deacon and
his divine, complained among themselves that the latter made too many
ill-timed allusions to the pecuniary wants of the congregation; and that
he had, in particular, almost as much as asked the deacon to make a legacy
that would enable those who were to stay behind, to paint the
meeting-house, erect a new horse-shed, purchase some improved stoves, and
reseat the body of the building. These modest requests, it was
whispered--for all passed in whispers then--would consume not less than a
thousand dollars of the deacon's hard earnings; and the thing was
mentioned as a wrong done him who was about to descend into the grave,
where nought of earth could avail him in any way.

Close was the siege that was laid to Deacon Pratt, during the last week of
his life. Many were the hints given of the necessity of