"It was on this spot that my father breathed his last, and hence have I said that it has a local interest in the tale I have to tell, which makes it the most fitting place in which to tell it."
"Oh," said the admiral, "he died here, did he?"
"Yes, where you are now sitting."
"Very good, I have seen many a brave man die in my time, and I hope to see a few more, although, I grant you, the death in the heat of conflict, and fighting for our country, is a vastly different thing to some shore-going mode of leaving the world."
"Yes," said Henry, as if pursuing his own meditations, rather than listening to the admiral. "Yes, it was from this precise spot that my father took his last look at the ancient house of his race. What we can now see of it, he saw of it with his dying eyes and many a time I have sat here and fancied the world of terrible thoughts that must at such a moment have come across his brain."
"You might well do so," said the doctor.
"You see," added Henry, "that from here the fullest view you have of any of the windows of the house is of that of Flora's room, as we have always called it, because for years she had had it as her chamber; and, when all the vegetation of summer is in its prime, and the vine which you perceive crawls over this summer-house is full of leaf and fruit, the view is so much hindered that it is difficult, without making an artificial gap in the clustering foliage, to see anything but the window."
"So I should imagine," replied Mr. Chillingworth.
"You, doctor," added Henry, "who know much of my family, need not be told what sort of man my father was."