the while as if we were composing our friend's
epitaph. I have a presentimen--"

"Do not utter it, my dear sir!" the Doctor entreated.

"He was a man--"

"Yes, yes; 'taking one thing with another, it is more than likely we
shall never see him again.' The words, sir, struck upon my spirit
like the tolling of a bell. But for Heaven's sake let us not
despair!"

"Life is precarious, Dr. Hansombody; as your profession, if any,
should teach. We are here to-day; we are gone--in the more sudden
cases--to-morrow. What do you say, sir, to a glass of wine at the
'Benbow'? To my thinking, we should both be the better for it."

CHAPTER XVIII.

APOTHEOSIS.

At this point my pen falters. The order of events would require us
now to travel back to Troy with Miss Marty and the Doctor and break
the news to the town. But have you the heart for it? Not I.

I tell you that I never now pass the Ferry Slip on the shore facing
Troy, on a summer's evening when the sun slants over the hill and the
smoke of the town rises through shadow into the bright air through
which the rooks are winging homeward--I never rest on my oars to
watch the horse-boat unmooring, the women up the street filling their
pitchers at the water-shute, the strawberry-gatherers at work in
their cliff gardens; but I see again Boutigo's van descend the hill
and two passengers in black alight from it upon the shore--Miss Marty
and the Doctor, charged with their terrible message. I see them
stand on the slip and shade their eyes as they look across to the
town glassed in the evening tide, I see beneath the shade of her palm
Miss Marty's lips tremble with the words that are to shatter that
happy picture of repose, brutally, violently, as a stone crashing
into a mirror. In the ferry-boat she trembles from head to foot,
between fear and a fever to speak and have it over. . . .

But the town would not believe. Nay, even when Town Crier Bonaday,
dropping tears into his paste-pot, affixed the placard to the door of
the Town Hall, the town would not believe. Men and women gathered at
his back, read the words stupidly, looked into each other's faces and
shook their heads. Two or three gazed skyward.

"The Major gone? No, no . . . there must be some mistake. He would
come back--to-morrow, perhaps--and bring light and laughter back with
him. It was long since the town had enjoyed a good laugh, and here
were all the makings of a rare one."

But the days