What of these companions she keeps, our familiar, amid the dim of wintry rooms? We speak of the widow and so of her sons, the lighthouse keeper in his cap, the eel-stung surveyor marooned under bedclothes, the lady at her long dispatch, and so we ask these broken ones how they can suffer to be seen when they especially and alone can never know the mortal cost? And ask again, we shambling dead, we pious and we unconsoled, if Hannah of unending eyes can see the precipice she toes? Or Fanny Conant in her cell prevailed upon by men to speak, can you bleak mortals comprehend the heresy of Fanny’s creed that fond and long departed love might raise its bones and thenceforth be? While in among the darksome dens that heal the wanting souls of men, what strange affection all the same this Mumler courts in wanton girls who have no name or provenance beyond their office of an hour? In hunger sharp and fancy dull where goes he, now, upon his way? Up the hill and down again, past plots where paupers fall to dust, what sweet removal from this world does Mumler in motion, in furious motion, in ruthless and furious motion pursue?