the voice beside me stopped. some one pushed up a chair for sanderson and he sat down. there was applause. i stood up and then struck by a thought, whispered: 'would you like to answer a few questions?'

'yes, yes. certainly,' he said.

'not too tired to answer them?'

'no—no.'

i had a little strip of notes in my hand and i thought of underlining one or two points in this tremendous project of a school he had spread before his audience before i let in the questioners. i began by saying that the lecture had been a little[pg 171] hard to follow but that it would repay following into the remotest corners of its meaning. then i heard a little commotion behind me and turned round to see what was the matter. sanderson had slipped from his chair on to the platform and was lying on his back breathing hoarsely. his collar and tie were removed forthwith. there were several doctors on the platform with us and they set to work upon him. i hesitated for a moment and then declared the meeting at an end, and asked the audience to disperse as speedily as possible. i thought it was an epileptic fit and i had no sense of sanderson's impending death. i had never seen anything of the sort before. i could not believe it when they told me he was dead.

the windows of the hot and sultry room were opened and most of the people made their way out, but the reporters remained and one or two persons of the curious type who hung about vaguely with an affectation of decorous sympathy. the lecture had been a very difficult one for the newspaper men, and they came now with a certain eagerness to ask questions about oundle and sanderson's career. i answered them as well as i[pg 172] could. sanderson lay across the back of the platform, bare-chested and still. it became evident that i had to seek out mrs. sanderson and tell her of this disaster.

there was a little difficulty in ascertaining at which hotel mr. and mrs. sanderson had been staying, and when i got there i found she was out shopping, and i waited some time for her return. meanwhile her daughter and her daughter-in-law at oundle were called up by telephone to come to her at once in london. i told her at first that her husband was ill, and then, as we went together in a cab to university college, dangerously ill. she was fully prepared to hear from the doctors at the hospital that the end had come. the poor lady took the news very simply and bravely.

in the mortuary chapel of university college hospital i saw my friend's face for the last time, in all the irresponsive dignity of death. we took mrs. sanderson to him and left her for a time alone with him. four years before in the same london hotel at which she was now solitary, he and she had shared the bitter grief of their eldest son's death together.