The placid inhabitants of the parish of Welland, including warbling
waggoners, lone shepherds, ploughmen, the blacksmith, the carpenter, the
gardener at the Great House, the steward and agent, the parson, clerk,
and so on, were hourly expecting the announcement of St. Cleeve's death.
The sexton had been going to see his brother-in-law, nine miles distant,
but promptly postponed the visit for a few days, that there might be the
regular professional hand present to toll the bell in a note of due
fulness and solemnity; an attempt by a deputy, on a previous occasion of
his absence, having degenerated into a miserable stammering clang that
was a disgrace to the parish.

But Swithin St. Cleeve did not decease, a fact of which, indeed, the
habituated reader will have been well aware ever since the rain came down
upon the young man in the ninth chapter, and led to his alarming illness.
Though, for that matter, so many maimed histories are hourly enacting
themselves in this dun-coloured world as to lend almost a priority of
interest to narratives concerning those 'Who lay great bases for eternity
Which prove more short than waste or ruining.' How it arose that he did not die was in this wise; and his example affords another instance of that reflex rule of the vassal soul over the
sovereign body, which, operating so wonderfully in elastic natures, and
more or less in all, originally gave rise to the legend that supremacy
lay on the other side.