Henry Brandling, a sorrowful, rich Englishman, travels to Germany to commission a “mechanical marvel” so wondrous it will raise his consumptive son from his sickbed.
Two very sad betting men were playing billiards, attended by a moist, consumptive marker; and for the moment Silas imagined that these were the only occupants of the apartment.
Nearest of all to the table was a gray-haired woman in black, evidently the mother of a consumptive young man in a rubber jacket, who stood before her.
First the man in the rubber coat passed out; then the consumptive and the dark-featured convict; next Vera Efremovna and Maria Pavlovna, and the boy who was born in the prison.
But the days still passed slowly notwithstanding, and I was heartily glad when the last one came and I was being whirled away from gouty, consumptive Buxton to London with its stern work and life.
The only people who did not possess this trait were the consumptive young man, the beautiful girl with sheep eyes, and the dark-featured man who was talking to the beardless man who resembled a Skopetz.
He became particularly attached to a consumptive young man who was on his way to a life term at hard labor. The story of the young man was a very short one. His father, a rich Southern landlord, died while he was a child.