“I had left the Chesilstowe cottage already,” he said, “when that happened. It was last December. I had taken a room in London , a large unfurnished room in a big ill-managed lodging house in a slum near Great Portland Street. The room was soon full of the appliances I had bought with his money; the work was going on steadily, successfully, drawing near an end. I was like a man emerging from a thicket, and suddenly coming on some unmeaning tragedy. I went to bury him. My mind was still on this research, and I did not lift a finger to save his character. I remember the funeral, the cheap hearse, the scant ceremony, the windy frostbitten hillside, and the old college friend of his who read the service over him⁠—a shabby, black, bent old man with a snivelling cold.