open. I had apparatus about me for procuring light, and that shewed me a

comfortable room, with a pile of wood in one corner, and no appearance of

disorder, except that, the door having been left partly open, the snow,

drifting in, had blocked up the threshold. I returned to the carriage, and

the sudden change from light to darkness at first blinded me. When I

recovered my sight--eternal God of this lawless world! O supreme Death! I

will not disturb thy silent reign, or mar my tale with fruitless

exclamations of horror--I saw Idris, who had fallen from the seat to the

bottom of the carriage; her head, its long hair pendent, with one arm, hung

over the side.--Struck by a spasm of horror, I lifted her up; her heart

was pulseless, her faded lips unfanned by the slightest breath.

I carried her into the cottage; I placed her on the bed. Lighting a fire, I

chafed her stiffening limbs; for two long hours I sought to restore

departed life; and, when hope was as dead as my beloved, I closed with

trembling hands her glazed eyes. I did not doubt what I should now do. In

the confusion attendant on my illness, the task of interring our darling

Alfred had devolved on his grandmother, the Ex-Queen, and she, true to her

ruling passion, had caused him to be carried to Windsor, and buried in the

family vault, in St. George's Chapel. I must proceed to Windsor, to calm

the anxiety of Clara, who would wait anxiously for us--yet I would fain

spare her the heart-breaking spectacle of Idris, brought in by me lifeless

from the journey. So first I would place my beloved beside her child in the

vault, and then seek the poor children who would be expecting me.

467

The Last Man