Jonas Hapgood, with his look of heavy facetiousness, slightly tempered now with curiosity, stood lounging into his great snowy boots at the foot of the bed.

Parson Fair, the consolation for the dying which he had thought to administer still in his mind, which could not swerve easily, his slender height in his black surtout inclined towards the sick man with gentle courtesy, waited.

Margaret Bean peered around the bed-curtain.

Madelon stood near the doctor, her face white as if she were dead, and a look of awful listening upon it.

In the background David Hautville, wrathful and wondering, towered over them all.
"I wish to declare in the presence of these witnesses," said Lot Gordon, "the doctor here testifying that I am in my right mind"-- the doctor gave a surly grunt of assent--"that it is my firm belief that all mortal ills come to man through his own agency, and this last ill of mine is no exception.