Page:The Garden of Romance - 1897.djvu/134

122 voice, and manner superadded which eternally beckoned to the unfortunate to come and take shelter under him; so that, before my uncle Toby had half finished the kind offers he was making to the father, had the son insensibly pressed up close to his knees, and had taken hold of the breast of his coat, and was pulling it towards him. The blood and spirits of Le Fevre, which were waxing cold and slow within him, and were retreating to their last citadel, the heart, rallied back, the film forsook his eyes for a moment; he looked up wistfully in my uncle Toby's face, then cast a look upon his boy; and that ligament, fine as it was, was never broken!

Nature instantly ebbed again;—the film returned to its place;—the pulse fluttered;—stopped;—went on,—throbbed,—stopped again,—moved, stopped. Shall I go on? No!

I am so impatient to return to my own story, that what remains of young Le Fevre's, that is, from this turn of his fortune to the time my uncle Toby recommended him for my preceptor, shall be told in a very few words in another page. All that is necessary to be added to this is as follows:—

That my uncle Toby, with young Le Fevre in his hand, attended the poor Lieutenant, as chief mourners, to his grave.

That the governor of Dendermond paid his obsequies all military honours, and that Yorick, not to be behind-hand, paid him all ecclesiastic, for he buried him in his chancel. And it appears, likewise, he preached a funeral sermon over him. I say it appears, for it was Yorick's custom, which I suppose a general one with those of his profession, on the first leaf of every sermon which he