He readily judged that he had caught cold;
and every moment feeling himself grow worse, he thought it necessary
to seek some house where he might procure rest and assistance.
Leaning on his closed umbrella, which, in his precarious
circumstances of travelling, he used in preference to a walking-
stick, and no longer able to encumber himself with even the light
load of his bag, he cast it amongst the brambles near him. Thinking,
from the symptoms he felt, that he might not have many more hours to
endure the ills of life, he staggered a few yards further. No
habitation appeared; his eyes soon seemed totally obscured, and he
sunk down on a bank. For a minute he attempted to struggle with the
cold grasp of death, which he believed was fastening on his heart.
"And are my days to be so short?--are they to end thus?" was the
voice of his thoughts,--for he was speechless. "Oh! thou merciful
Providence, pardon my repining, and those who have brought me to
this! My only Father, hear me!"
These were the last movements of his soundless lips, while his blood
seemed freezing to insensibility. His eyelids were closed, and pale,
and without sign of animation, he lay at the foot of a tree nigh
which he had dropped.
He remained a quarter of an hour in this dead-like state before he
was observed; at length, a gentleman who was passing along that road,
on his way to his country-seat in the neighborhood, thought he
perceived a man lying amongst the high grass a little onward on the
heath.
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