'Don't make no noise, miss, till he talks; he'll come to for a bit, anon.'

Except that there was no sign of convulsions, the countenance was like that
of an epileptic arrested in one of his contortions.

There was a frown and smirk like that of idiotcy, and a strip of white
eyeball was also disclosed.

Suddenly, with a kind of chilly shudder, he opened his eyes wide, and
screwed his lips together, and blinked and stared on me with a fatuised
uncertainty, that gradually broke into a feeble smile.

'Ah! the girl--Austin's child. Well, dear, I'm hardly able--I'll speak
to-morrow--next day--it is tic--neuralgia, or something--_torture_--tell
her.'

So, huddling himself together, he lay again in his great chair, with the
same inexpressible helplessness in his attitude, and gradually his face
resumed its dreadful cast.

'Come away, miss: he's changed his mind; he'll not be fit to talk to you
noways all day, maybe,' said the old woman, again in a whisper.

So forth we stole from the room, I unspeakably shocked. In fact, he looked
as if he were dying, and so, in my agitation, I told the crone, who,
forgetting the ceremony with which she usually treated me, chuckled out
derisively,

'A-dying is he? Well, he be like Saint Paul--he's bin a-dying daily this