LAST HOURS. 265 



Several times he was asked whether a telegraphic 

 summons should not be sent to my mother; but to 

 this proposal he steadily refused his assent, on the 

 ground that her own state of health rendered her unfit 

 for the travel and anxiety. Neither would he allow the 

 truth to be told her, for fear of the shock which it 

 would cause. All that he would permit was a simple 

 preparatory message, stating the fact of his illness, 

 without details of any kind. And then he set himself 

 to prepare for the end. 



Early in the Sunday afternoon the pain left him a 

 sure sign that he had not many hours to live. For a 

 time he seemed to rally, and, asking for pencil and 

 paper, spent the next two hours in writing a letter 

 home. Save that this letter is written in the faintest 

 of characters probably owing to the hardness of the 

 pencil no one would imagine for a moment that it had 

 proceeded from the hand of a dying man. The writing 

 is as firm and steady as usual, there is not a trace of 

 incoherence, or even of haste, and, amid the many 

 directions given, there is nothing superfluous, nothing 

 that would have been discovered in the ordinary course 

 of things without his assistance. His mind must have 

 been perfectly clear and under control, in spite of his 

 great weakness and the nearness of the end. And he 

 was evidently fully aware of his condition, and quite 

 conscious that those few pencil lines were the last that 

 his hand would ever trace. 



His letter written, he signed it with his usual 

 firm, free signature, and asked that it might be posted 



