Chapter 4

"Oh! mourn not for them, their grief is o'er,
Oh! weep not for them, they weep no more;
For deep is their sleep, though cold and hard
Their pillow may be in the old kirk-yard."

Bayly.

Early on the succeeding morning, the whole household of deacon Pratt,
himself included, were up and doing. It was as the sun came up out of the
waters that Mary and her uncle met in the porch, as if to greet each
other.

"Yonder comes the Widow White, and seemingly in a great hurry," said the
niece, anxiously; "I am afraid her patient is worse!"

"He seemed better when I left him last evening, though a little tired with
talking," returned the uncle. "The man _would_ talk, do all I could to
stop him. I wanted to get but two or three words from him, and he used a
thousand, without once using the few I wished most to hear. A talking man
is that Daggett, I can tell you, Mary!"

"He'll never talk ag'in, deacon!" exclaimed the Widow White, who had got
so near as to hear the concluding words of the last speaker--"He'll never
say good or evil more!"

The deacon was so confounded as to be speechless. As for Mary, she
expressed her deep regrets that the summons should have been so sudden,
and that the previous preparation was so small; matters that gave her far
more concern than any other consideration. They were not long left to
conjectures, the voluble widow soon supplying all the facts that had
occurred. It appeared that Daggett died in the night, the widow having
found him stiff and cold on visiting his bed-side a few minutes before.
That this somewhat unexpected event, as to the time at least, was hastened
by the excitement of the conversation mentioned, there can be little
doubt, though no comment was made on the circumstance. The immediate cause
of death was suffocation from the effects of suppuration, as so often
occurs in rapid consumption.

It would be representing deacon Pratt as a worse man than he actually was,
to say that this sudden death had no effect on his feelings. For a short
time it brought him back to a sense of his own age, and condition, and
prospects. For half an hour these considerations troubled him, but the
power of Mammon gradually resumed its sway, and the unpleasant images
slowly disappeared in others that he found more agreeable. Then he began
seriously to bethink him of what the circumstances required to be done.

As there was nothing unusual in the death of Daggett, the investigations
of the coroner were not required. It was clearly a natural, though a
sudden death. It remained, therefore, only to give directions about the
funeral, and to have an eye to the safe-keeping of the effects of the