At ten o'clock, when she had locked up the house, she had come as usual to the parlour door, to tell my father it was bed-time. He did not answer, being sitting with his back to the door, apparently busy writing. So she went away.
Half an hour afterwards she came again. He sat there still—he had not moved. One hand supported his head; the other, the fingers stiffly holding the pen, lay on the table. He seemed intently gazing on what he had written. It ran thus:
"GOOD FRIEND,
"To-morrow I shall be—"
But there the hand had stopped—for ever.
O dear father! on that to-morrow thou wert with God.
CHAPTER XXII
It was the year 1812. I had lived for ten years as a brother in my adopted brother's house, whither he had brought me on the day of my father's funeral; entreating that I should never leave it again. For, as was shortly afterwards made clear, fate—say Providence—was now inevitably releasing him from a bond, from which, so long as my poor father lived, John would never have released himself. It was discovered that the profits of the tanning trade had long been merely nominal—that of necessity, for the support of our two families, the tan-yard must be sold, and the business confined entirely to the flour-mill.
At this crisis, as if the change of all things broke her stout old heart, which never could bend to any new ways—Jael died. We laid her at my father's and mother's feet—poor old Jael! and that grave-yard in St. Mary's Lane now covered over all who loved me, all who were of my youth day—my very own.