ent upon these plans, I repaired to Grey Friars, and to Thomas
Newcome's chamber there.

Bayham opened the door when I knocked, and came towards me with a finger
on his lip, and a sad, sad countenance. He closed the door gently behind
him, and led me into the court. "Clive is with him, and Miss Newcome. He
is very ill. He does not know them," said Bayham with a sob. "He calls
out for both of them: they are sitting there and he does not know them."

In a brief narrative, broken by more honest tears, Fred Bayham, as we
paced up and down the court, told me what had happened. The old man
must have passed a sleepless night, for on going to his chamber in
the morning, his attendant found him dressed in his chair, and his bed
undisturbed. He must have sat all through the bitter night without a
fire: but his hands were burning hot, and he rambled in his talk. He
spoke of some one coming to drink tea with him, pointed to the fire,
and asked why it was not made; he would not go to bed, though the nurse
pressed him. The bell began to ring for morning chapel; he got up and
went towards his gown, groping towards it as though he could hardly
see, and put it over his shoulders, and would go out, but he would have
fallen in the court if the good nurse had not given him her arm; and the
physician of the hospital, passing fortunately at this moment, who had
always been a great friend of Colonel Newcome's, insisted upon leading
him back to his room again, and got him to bed. "When the bell stopped,
he wanted to rise once more; he fancied he was a boy at school again,"
said the nurse, "and that he was going in to Dr. Raine, who was
schoolmaster here ever so many years ago." So it was, that when happier
days seemed to be dawning for the good man, that reprieve came too late.
Grief, and years, and humiliation, and care, and cruelty had been too
strong for him, and Thomas Newcome was stricken down.

Bayham's story told, I entered the room, over which the twilight was
falling, and saw the figures of Clive and Ethel seated at each end of
the bed. The poor old man within it was calling incoherent sentences. I
had to call Clive from the present grief before him, with intelligence
of further sickness awaiting him at home. Our poor patient did not heed
what I said to his son. "You must go home to Rosa," Ethel said. "She
will be sure to ask for her husband, and forgiveness is best, dear
Clive. I will stay with uncle. I will never leave him. Please