This last moment had utterly subverted it; the whole great
structure seemed to vanish.
"See; here are the dust and ashes of it," observed Alice, taking
something that was indeed only a pinch of dust out of the secret
compartment. "There is nothing else."
II.
_May 5th, Wednesday_.--The father of these two sons, an aged man at the
time, took much to heart their enmity; and after the catastrophe, he
never held up his head again. He was not told that his son had perished,
though such was the belief of the family; but imbibed the opinion that he
had left his home and native land to become a wanderer on the face of the
earth, and that some time or other he might return. In this idea he spent
the remainder of his days; in this idea he died. It may be that the
influence of this idea might be traced in the way in which he spent some
of the latter years of his life, and a portion of the wealth which had
become of little value in his eyes, since it had caused dissension and
bloodshed between the sons of one household. It was a common mode of
charity in those days--a common thing for rich men to do--to found an
almshouse or a hospital, and endow it, for the support of a certain
number of old and destitute men or women, generally such as had some
claim of blood upon the founder, or at least were natives of the parish,
the district, the county, where he dwelt.
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