My attention was called to that, however, very speedily by
a polite but urgent quarrel between himself and the Basque landlady as
to the necessity of her hanging a cheap crucifix in the shadow over the
bed, where it might catch my uncle's eye, where, indeed, I found it had
caught his eye.
"Good Lord!" I cried; "is THAT still going on!"
That night the little clergyman watched, and in the small hours he
raised a false alarm that my uncle was dying, and made an extraordinary
fuss. He raised the house. I shall never forget that scene, I think,
which began with a tapping at my bedroom door just after I had fallen
asleep, and his voice--
"If you want to see your uncle before he goes, you must come now."
The stuffy little room was crowded when I reached it, and lit by three
flickering candles. I felt I was back in the eighteenth century. There
lay my poor uncle amidst indescribably tumbled bedclothes, weary of life
beyond measure, weary and rambling, and the little clergyman trying to
hold his hand and his attention, and repeating over and over again:
"Mr.
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