The placid¹ inhabitants of the parish of Welland, including warbling waggoners, lone² shepherds, ploughmen, the blacksmith, the carpenter, the gardener at the Great House, the steward³ and agent, the parson, clerk, and so on, were hourly expecting the announcement of St. Cleeve’s death. The sexton had been going to see his brother-inlaw, nine miles distant, but promptly⁴ postponed⁵ the visit for a few days, that there might be the regular professional hand present to toll⁶ the bell in a note of due fulness and solemnity; an attempt by a deputy, on a previous occasion of his absence, having degenerated⁷ into a miserable⁸ stammering⁹ clang that was a disgrace to the parish.

But Swithin St. Cleeve did not decease, a fact of which, indeed, the habituated reader will have been well aware ever since the rain came down upon the young man in the ninth chapter, and led to his alarming illness. Though, for that matter, so many maimed histories are hourly enacting¹⁰ themselves in this dun-coloured world as to lend almost a priority of interest to narratives¹¹ concerning those

‘Who lay great bases for eternity¹²
Which prove more short than waste or ruining.’

How it arose that he did not die was in this wise; and his example affords another instance of that reflex rule of the

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