on questioning her further, it appeared that he was possessed only by the delirium of excessive grief.  This old man, tottering on the edge of the grave, and prolonging his prospect through millions of calculated years,—­this visionary who had not seen starvation in the wasted forms of his wife and children, or plague in the horrible sights and sounds that surrounded him—­this astronomer, apparently dead on earth, and living only in the motion of the spheres—­loved his family with unapparent but intense affection.  Through long habit they had become a part of himself; his want of worldly knowledge, his absence of mind and infant guilelessness, made him utterly dependent on them.  It was not till one of them died that he perceived their danger; one by one they were carried off by pestilence; and his wife, his helpmate and supporter, more necessary to him than his own limbs and frame, which had hardly been taught the lesson of self-preservation, the kind companion whose voice always spoke peace to him, closed her eyes in death.  The old man felt the system of universal nature which he had so long studied and adored, slide from under him, and he stood among the dead, and lifted his voice in curses.—­No wonder that the attendant should interpret as phrensy the harrowing maledictions of the grief-struck old man.

I had commenced my search late in the day, a November day, that closed in early with pattering rain and melancholy wind.  As I turned from the door, I saw Merrival, or rather the shadow of Merrival, attenuated and wild, pass me, and sit on the steps of his home.  The breeze scattered the grey locks on his temples, the rain drenched his uncovered head, he sat hiding his face in his withered hands.  I pressed his shoulder to awaken his attention, but he did not alter his position.  “Merrival,” I said, “it is long since we have seen you—­you must return to Windsor with me—­Lady Idris desires to see you, you will not refuse her request—­come home with me.”

He replied in a hollow voice, “Why deceive a helpless old man, why talk hypocritically to one half crazed?  Windsor is not my home; my true home I have found; the home that the Creator has prepared for me.”

His accent of bitter scorn thrilled me—­“Do not tempt me to speak,” he continued, “my words would scare you—­in an universe of cowards I dare think—­among the church-yard tombs—­among the victims of His merciless tyranny I dare reproach the Supreme Evil.  How can he punish me?  Let him bare his arm and transfix me with lightning—­this is also one of his attributes”—­and the old man laughed.

He rose, and I followed him through the rain to a neighbouring church-yard —­he threw himself on the wet earth.  “Here they are,” he cried, “beautiful creatures—­breathing, speaking, loving creatures.  She who by day and night cherished the age-worn lover of her youth—­they, parts of my flesh, my children—­here they are:  call them, scream their names through the night; they will not answer!” He clung to the little heaps that marked the graves.  “I ask but one thing; I do not fear His hell, for I have it here; I do not desire His heaven, let me but die and be laid beside them; let me but, when I lie dead, feel my flesh as it moulders, mingle with theirs.  Promise,” and he raised himself painfully, and seized my arm, “promise to bury me with them.”