eerful and
hopeful. When he came again to the house, about an hour before the time
fixed for the early dinner, he seemed very tired, silent, and absorbed.
But this was so usual with him after a day of engrossing work, that it
caused no alarm or surprise to his sister-in-law--the only member of his
household who happened to be at home. He wrote some letters--among them,
these last letters which we give--in the library of the house, and also
arranged many trifling business matters, with a view to his departure
for London the next morning. He was to be accompanied, on his return at
the end of the week, by Mr. Fildes, to introduce the "new illustrator"
to the neighbourhood in which many of the scenes of this last book of
Charles Dickens, as of his first, were laid.

It was not until they were seated at the dinner-table that a striking
change in the colour and expression of his face startled his
sister-in-law, and on her asking him if he was ill, he said, "Yes, very
ill; I have been very ill for the last hour." But on her expressing an
intention of sending instantly for a doctor, he stopped her, and said:
"No, he would go on with dinner, and go afterwards to London." And then
he made an effort to struggle against the fit that was fast coming on
him, and talked, but incoherently, and soon very indistinctly. It being
now evident that he _was_ ill, and very seriously ill, his sister-in-law
begged him to come to his own room before she sent off for medical help.
"Come and lie down," she entreated. "Yes, on the ground," he said, very
distinctly--these were the last words he spoke--and he slid from her
arm, and fell upon the floor.

The servants brought a couch into the dining-room, where he was laid. A
messenger was despatched for Mr. Steele, the Rochester doctor, and with
a telegram to his doctor in London, and to his daughters. This was a few
minutes after six o'clock.

His daughters arrived, with Mr. Frank Beard, this same evening. His
eldest son the next morning, and his son Henry and his sister Letitia in
the evening of the 9th--too late, alas!

All through the night, Charles Dickens never opened his eyes, or showed
a sign of consciousness. In the afternoon of the 9th, Dr. Russell
Reynolds arrived at Gad's Hill, having been summoned by Mr. Frank Beard
to meet himself and Mr. Steele. But he could only confirm their hopeless
verdict, and made his opinion known with much kind sympathy, to the
family, before returning to Lon