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"And here is yet another—such pitiful things occur here among our Brothers. Sometimes I write them down and file them away. Perhaps some day they will be found by some of my successors, and add to the history of our home. Listen to this; I will read it if you don't mind:

"Pathetic circumstances attach to the death of Dr. B., one of the Brethren of Charter House, London, which took place on Tuesday evening. For months past Dr., who was over eighty, had been in failing health, but his work in connection with the invention of an electric lamp for mines, on which he had been engaged for many years, had buoyed him up. The ultimate failure of his plans greatly depressed him, and he gradually sank and died in his rooms in Charter House.

"On Saturday he received a letter from the Patent Office, informing him that his application for the taking out of a Patent had been approved, but he remarked, "It is too late.'

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"No, take it along with you-I make them in hectograph so my friends can each have a copy."

And so, with the oatmeal eaten there had been enough for two, the nephew not having put in an appearanceand the tea drank, I left my genial host, whose reverence for the Colonel was like my own, promising to come again in the morning when he would show me over Washhouse Court, where the Colonel often walked; through the cloister, where Mr. Thackeray's and John Leech's tablets were to be seen high on the white walls, and into the chapel, where Thackeray prayed as a boy, and where his greatest and best beloved creation prayed both as boy and man.

CHAPTER III

WHERE THE COLONEL WALKED

AND PRAYED

M

CHAPTER III

WHERE THE COLONEL WALKED

AND PRAYED

Y GUIDE, the Colonel's brother Pensioner, was waiting for me the next morning when I pushed

open his door. He had taken his cloak from its hook, and was slipping it over his shoulders.

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"We always wear our gowns when we walk about the courts, but if you do not mind," he added, with a laugh, “I will leave my hat behind. I like to feel the fresh air on my poor scalp," and he tapped the bald spot behind his forehead. "Let us go first through Washhouse Court way it is only a step, almost opposite where we stand." While he was speaking we had crossed the gravelled space, dived under a dark archway, and were standing in a small square court that looked like a prison yard, so bare, so desolate, and so unclimbable was it. The scarred, sootencrusted walls were pock-marked with the maladies of centuries; here and there a small window peered out upon the desolate open, with an uncertain, frightened look; some high, smooth chimneys rose sheer from the ground without a foothold; the roof came down with a sharp slant — that, too, was unscalable - while the only exit lay under another

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