The driver recognised my aunt, and, in obedience to a motion of her hand at the window, drove slowly off; we following.
"You understand it now, Trot," said my aunt. "He is gone!"
"Did he die in the hospital?"
"Yes."
She sat immovable beside me; but, again I saw the stray tears on her face.
"He was there once before," said my aunt presently. "He was ailing a long time—a shattered, broken, man, these many years. When he knew his state in this last illness, he asked them to send for me. He was sorry then. Very sorry."
"You went, I know, aunt."
"I went. I was with him a good deal afterwards."
"He died the night before we went to Canterbury?" said I.
My aunt nodded. "No one can harm him now," she said. "It was a vain threat."
We drove away, out of town, to the churchyard at Hornsey. "Better here than in the streets," said my aunt. "He was born here."
We alighted; and followed the plain coffin to a corner I remember well, where the service was read consigning it to the dust.
"Six-and-thirty years ago, this day, my dear," said my aunt, as we walked back to the chariot, "I was married. God forgive us all!"
We took our seats in silence; and so she sat beside me for a long time; holding my hand. At length she suddenly burst into tears, and said:
"He was a fine-looking man when I married him, Trot:—and he was sadly changed! "
It did not last long. After the relief of tears, she soon became composed, and even cheerful. Her nerves were a little shaken, she said, or she would not have given way to it. God forgive us all!
So we rode back to her little cottage at Highgate, where we found the following short note, which had arrived by that morning's post from Mr. Micawber:
"Canterbury,
"My dear Madam, and Copperfield,
"The fair land of promise lately looming on the horizon is again enveloped in impenetrable mists, and for ever withdrawn from the eyes of a drifting wretch whose Doom is sealed!
"Another writ has been issued (in His Majesty's High Court of King's Bench at Westminster), in another cause of Heep v. Micawber, and the defendant in that cause is the prey of the sheriff having legal jurisdiction in this bailiwick.
'Now's the day, and now's the hour,
See the front of battle lower,
See approach proud Edward's power—
"Consigned to which, and to a speedy end (for mental torture is not supportable beyond a certain point, and that point I feel I have attained), my course is run. Bless you, bless you! Some future traveller, visiting,
