"Really, Yorick, he is your Bishop! But I suppose that's the sort of thing I meant."
"My dear, he can't!"
"Why not?"
"Because his Creator has anticipated him." The Rector seemed happy over this. His wife did not feel quite certain she understood it. But she was sure it was time to light her candle, and that, broadly speaking, the curtain might fall.
"It has been a strange story," said she, in a sort of generally forgiving, conclusive way.
"It has!" repeated Athelstan Taylor. "And not a pleasant one! Anyhow, it's one consolation, that it never can happen again."
FINIS
[THE AUTHOR TO HIS READERS ONLY]
When, to my great surprise, I published four years since a novel called "Joseph Vance" a statement was repeated more than once in some journals that were kind enough to notice it, that its author was seventy years of age. Why this made me feel like a centenarian I do not know, especially as it was five years ahead of the facts. But that was its moral effect. Its practical one was to make me endeavour to set it right. I then learned for the first time how hopeless is the pursuit of an error through the columns of the press, and soon gave up the chase.