I thought it only fair to say something of what I apprehended to some who were entitled to be warned.  The landlady’s face fell when I mentioned my fears.

Poor man!—­she said.—­And will leave the best room empty!  Has n’t he got any sisters or nieces or anybody to see to his things, if he should be took away?  Such a sight of cases, full of everything!  Never thought of his failin’ so suddin.  A complication of diseases, she expected.  Liver-complaint one of ’em?

After this first involuntary expression of the too natural selfish feelings, (which we must not judge very harshly, unless we happen to be poor widows ourselves, with children to keep filled, covered, and taught,—­rents high,—­beef eighteen to twenty cents per pound,)—­after this first squeak of selfishness, followed by a brief movement of curiosity, so invariable in mature females, as to the nature of the complaint which threatens the life of a friend or any person who may happen to be mentioned as ill,—­the worthy soul’s better feelings struggled up to the surface, and she grieved for the doomed invalid, until a tear or two came forth and found their way down a channel worn for them since the early days of her widowhood.

Oh, this dreadful, dreadful business of being the prophet of evil!  Of all the trials which those who take charge of others’ health and lives have to undergo, this is the most painful.  It is all so plain to the practised eye!—­and there is the poor wife, the doting mother, who has never suspected anything, or at least has clung always to the hope which you are just going to wrench away from her!—­I must tell Iris that I think her poor friend is in a precarious state.  She seems nearer to him than anybody.

I did tell her.  Whatever emotion it produced, she kept a still face, except, perhaps, a little trembling of the lip.—­Could I be certain that there was any mortal complaint?—­Why, no, I could not be certain; but it looked alarming to me.—­He shall have some of my life,—­she said.

I suppose this to have been a fancy of hers, or a kind of magnetic power she could give out;—­at any rate, I cannot help thinking she wills her strength away from herself, for she has lost vigor and color from that day.  I have sometimes thought he gained the force she lost; but this may have been a whim, very probably.

One day she came suddenly to me, looking deadly pale.  Her lips moved, as if she were speaking; but I could not at first hear a word.  Her hair looked strangely, as if lifting itself, and her eyes were full of wild light.  She sunk upon a chair, and I thought was falling into one of her trances.  Something had frozen her blood with fear; I thought, from what she said, half audibly, that she believed she had seen a shrouded figure.

That night, at about eleven o’clock, I was sent for to see the Little Gentleman, who was taken suddenly ill.  Bridget, the servant, went before me with a light.  The doors were both unfastened, and I found myself ushered, without hindrance, into the dim light of the mysterious apartment I had so longed to enter.