3.5: Can one's encounter with Death be put off?

Froggie has spent his fifth week alone in a state of nervous exhaustion. Of course there have been no customers! No one seems to want to visit the Swan Hotel and thus break his solitude. He no longer expects this and accepts the sound of footsteps and the rattling of the front door every evening for what it must be: an intimation of his own end.

Each day passes the same way. He barely eats: a slice of cold pie when the sun presumably shines somewhere behind the thick autumnal clouds lifting the light level inside the pub merely to a murky gloom. The Barman had assumed he would have replenished the pantry from the town below but that will not now be possible. His place is here, waiting. Who knows how long supplies will last? Fortunately the supply of Toads’ Tipple will last but he is now nearly finishing each barrel himself by the end of the week.

Why has Death not called him home? Drifting back into sleep it seems, perhaps, that there is a reason. He dreams he is delaying Death in a game of strategy until he can achieve one last meaningful act to redeem his life: perhaps to apologise to the Barman and his friends for his past misdeeds.