rich and the poor. The physicians had expressed their
opinion that the admiral might linger for many days, and the vicar
thought that advantage might be derived from his being left for a short
time to his own reflections, and to recover from the state of exhaustion
arising from the communications of the preceding evening. When he
arrived at the hall the windows were closed--Admiral De Courcy was no
more.

Reader, you shall hear how he died. It was about two o'clock in the
morning that he awoke from an uneasy slumber, and felt his end
approaching. The old crone who had been hired as a nurse to watch at
night, was fast asleep in her chair. The rushlight had burned low down
in the socket, and, through the interstices of its pierced shade, threw
a feeble and alternate light and shadow over the room. The mouth of the
dying man was glued together from internal heat, and he suffered from
agonising thirst. He murmured for relief, but no one answered. Again
and again he attempted to make his careless attendant acquainted with
his wants, but in vain. He stretched out his arm and moved the curtains
of the bed, that the noise of the curtain-rings upon the iron rods might
have the effect, and then fell back with exhaustion, arising from the
effort which he had made.

The old beldame, who, for money, was willing to undertake the most
revolting offices, and who, without remuneration, was so hardened, by
her constant familiarity with disease and death, that she was callous
and insensible to the most earnest supplication, woke up at the noise
which the curtain-rings had made, and opened the curtain to ascertain
what was required. Long experience told her at once that all would soon
be over, and she was convinced that her charge would never rise or speak
again.

This was true; but the suffering man (his arm lying outside of the
bedclothes, and his elbow bent upwards) still pointed with his finger to
his parched mouth, with a look of entreaty from his sinking eyes. The
old fiend shut the curtains, and the admiral waited with impatience for
them to reopen with the drop of water "to cool his parched tongue"--but
in vain. Leaving him to his fate, she hobbled about the room to secure
a golden harvest, before others should make their appearance and share
it with her. His purse was on the table: she removed the gold which it
contained, and left the silver; she chose that which she imagined to be
the most valuable of the three r