his room.  The old man swallowed the wine.  He appeared a little revived; it was long since he had tasted such a cordial,—­his heart appeared to expand to a momentary confidence.  “John, what did you see in that room?” “Nothing, Sir.”  “That’s a lie; everyone wants to cheat or to rob me.”  “Sir, I don’t want to do either.”  “Well, what did you see that you—­you took notice of?” “Only a picture, Sir.”  “A picture, Sir!—­the original is still alive.”  John, though under the impression of his recent feelings, could not but look incredulous.  “John,” whispered his uncle;—­ “John, they say I am dying of this and that; and one says it is for want of nourishment, and one says it is for want of medicine,—­but, John,” and his face looked hideously ghastly, “I am dying of a fright.  That man,” and he extended his meager arm toward the closet, as if he was pointing to a living being; “that man, I have good reason to know, is alive still.”  “How is that possible, Sir?” said John involuntarily, “the date on the picture is 1646.”  “You have seen it,—­you have noticed it,” said his uncle.  “Well,”—­he rocked and nodded on his bolster for a moment, then, grasping John’s hand with an unutterable look, he exclaimed, “You will see him again, he is alive.”  Then, sinking back on his bolster, he fell into a kind of sleep or stupor, his eyes still open, and fixed on John.

The house was now perfectly silent, and John had time and space for reflection.  More thoughts came crowding on him than he wished to welcome, but they would not be repulsed.  He thought of his uncle’s habits and character, turned the matter over and over again in his mind, and he said to himself, “The last man on earth to be superstitious.  He never thought of anything but the price of stocks, and the rate of exchange, and my college expenses, that hung heavier at his heart than all; and such a man to die of a fright,—­a ridiculous fright, that a man living 150 years ago is alive still, and yet—­he is dying.”  John paused, for facts will confute the most stubborn logician.  “With all his hardness of mind, and of heart, he is dying of a fright.  I heard it in the kitchen, I have heard it from himself,—­he could not be deceived.  If I had ever heard he was nervous, or fanciful, or superstitious, but a character so contrary to all these impressions;—­a man that, as poor Butler says, in his ‘Remains of the Antiquarian,’ would have ’sold Christ over again for the numerical piece of silver which Judas got for him,’—­such a man to die of fear!  Yet he is dying,” said John, glancing his fearful eye on the contracted nostril, the glazed eye, the drooping jaw, the whole horrible apparatus of the facies Hippocraticae displayed, and soon to cease its display.