"I fear not—I fear there is no hope."
"Will it be over soon?"
"Very soon, I think. I do not believe that he can last more than four-and-twenty hours."
The surgeon waited for a few moments after saying this, expecting some exclamation of surprise or grief from the dying man's brother: but there was none; and with a hasty "good evening" the medical man quitted the room.
It was growing dusk, and the twilight shadows upon Joseph Wilmot's face made it, in its sullen gloom, darker even than it had been in the railway carriage.
"I'm glad of it, I'm glad of it," he muttered; "I shall meet Harry Dunbar alone."
The bed-chamber in which the sick man lay opened out of a little sitting-room. Sampson's carpet-bag and portmanteau had been left in this sitting-room.
Joseph Wilmot searched the pockets in the clothes that had been taken off his brother's senseless form.
There was some loose silver and a bunch of keys in the waistcoat-pocket, and a well-worn leather-covered memorandum-book in the breast-pocket of the old-fashioned coat.
Joseph took these things into the sitting-room, closed the door between the two apartments, and then rang for lights.