-
bloodless, hollow-eyed.
    »This is the kind of practical joke that Fate likes to play upon us!« the
sufferer growled in a harsh, quaking voice, his countenance divided between
genial welcome and surly wrath. »It'll be the end of me. Pooh! who doesn't know
that such a thing is fatal at my age? Blood-poisoning has fairly begun. I'd a
good deal rather have broken my neck among honest lumps of old red sandstone. A
nail! A damned Brummagem nail! - So you collared the first prize in geology, eh?
I take that as a kindness, Godwin. You've got a bit beyond Figuier and his
Deluge, eh? His Deluge, bah!«
    And he laughed discordantly. On the other side of the bed sat Mrs. Gunnery,
grizzled and feeble dame. Shaken into the last stage of senility by this alarm,
she wiped tears from her flaccid cheeks, and moaned a few unintelligible words.
    The geologist's forecast of doom was speedily justified. Another day bereft
him of consciousness, and when, for a short while, he had rambled among memories
of his youth, the end came. It was found that he had made a will, bequeathing
his collections and scientific instruments to Godwin Peak; his books were to be
sold for the benefit of the widow, who would enjoy an annuity purchased out of
her husband's savings. The poor old woman, as it proved, had little need of
income; on the thirteenth day after Mr. Gunnery's funeral, she too was borne
forth from the house, and the faithful couple slept together.
    To inherit from the dead was an impressive experience to Godwin. At the
present stage of his development, every circumstance affecting him started his
mind upon the quest of reasons, symbolisms, principles; the natural supernatural
had hold upon him, and ruled his thought whenever it was free from the spur of
arrogant instinct. This tendency had been strengthened by the influence of his
friend Earwaker, a young man of singularly complex personality, positive and
analytic in a far higher degree than Peak, yet with a vein of imaginative vigour
which seemed to befit quite a different order of mind. Godwin was not
distinguished by originality in thinking, but his strongly featured character
converted to uses of his own the intellectual suggestions he so rapidly caught
from others. Earwaker's habit of reflection had much to do with the strange
feelings awakened in Godwin when he transferred to his mother's house the
cabinets which had been Mr. Gunnery's pride