"They chink when they shoot out here," said the student, smiling,
"so, according to the gossips, they are not coffins, but purses. I
shall be well and rich yet, some day, if it please God, and shall
live perhaps to love a daughter Milly, in remembrance of the
kindest nature and the gentlest heart in the world."

He put up his hand as if expecting her to take it, but, being
weakened, he lay still, with his face resting on his other hand,
and did not turn round.

The Chemist glanced about the room;--at the student's books and
papers, piled upon a table in a corner, where they, and his
extinguished reading-lamp, now prohibited and put away, told of the
attentive hours that had gone before this illness, and perhaps
caused it;--at such signs of his old health and freedom, as the
out-of-door attire that hung idle on the wall;--at those
remembrances of other and less solitary scenes, the little
miniatures upon the chimney-piece, and the drawing of home;--at
that token of his emulation, perhaps, in some sort, of his personal
attachment too, the framed engraving of himself, the looker-on.
The time had been, only yesterday, when not one of these objects,
in its remotest association of interest with the living figure
before him, would have been lost on Redlaw. Now, they were but
objects; or, if any gleam of such connexion shot upon him, it
perplexed, and not enlightened him, as he stood looking round with
a dull wonder.

The student, recalling the thin hand which had remained so long
untouched, raised himself on the couch, and turned his head.