The horse that had drawn coal during the winter, now hitched to an ice wagon, died in the street.

The pavements throbbed, the basement restaurants exhaled a sickening air, and through the grating was blown the cellar's cool and mouldy breath; and the sanitary writer on the editorial page cried out: "Boil your drinking-water!" It was Witherspoon's custom, during the heated term, to take his wife and his daughter to the seaside, and to return when the weather there became insufferably hot.

It was supposed that Henry would go, but when the time came he declared that he had in view a piece of work that most not be neglected.

Witherspoon recognized the urgency of no work except his own.

"What, you can't go!" he exclaimed.