Now, where he stood alone, the last of impenitent sinners,
  Weeping, old friends and comrades came to him out of the circle,
  And with their tears besought him to hear what the Lord had done for
    them. 
  Ever he shook them off, not roughly, nor smiled at their transports. 
  Then the preachers spake and painted the terrors of Judgment,
  And of the bottomless pit, and the flames of hell everlasting. 
  Still and dark he stood, and neither listened nor heeded: 
  But when the fervent voice of the while-haired exhorter was lifted,
  Fell his brows in a scowl of fierce and scornful rejection. 
  “Lord, let this soul be saved!” cried the fervent voice of the old man;
  “For that the shepherd rejoiceth more truly for one that hath wandered,
  And hath been found again, than for all the others that strayed not.”

  Out of the midst of the people, a woman old and decrepit,
  Tremulous through the light, and tremulous into the shadow,
  Wavered toward him with slow, uncertain paces of palsy,
  Laid her quivering hand on his arm and brokenly prayed him: 
  “Louis Lebeau, I closed in death the eyes of your mother. 
  On my breast she died, in prayer for her fatherless children,
  That they might know the Lord, and follow Him always, and serve Him. 
  Oh, I conjure you, my son, by the name of your mother in glory,
  Scorn not the grace of the Lord!” As when a summer-noon’s tempest
  Breaks in one swift gush of rain, then ceases and gathers
  Darker and gloomier yet on the lowering front of the heavens,
  So brake his mood in tears, as he soothed her, and stilled her
    entreaties,
  And so he turned again with his clouded looks to the people.

  Vibrated then from the hush the accents of mournfullest pity,—­
  His who was gifted in speech, and the glow of the fires illumined
  All his pallid aspect with sudden and marvellous splendor: 
  “Louis Lebeau,” he spake, “I have known you and loved you from
    childhood;
  Still, when the others blamed you, I took your part, for I knew you. 
  Louis Lebeau, my brother, I thought to meet you in heaven,
  Hand in hand with her who is gone to heaven before us,
  Brothers through her dear love!  I trusted to greet you and lead you
  Up from the brink of the River unto the gates of the City. 
  Lo! my years shall be few on the earth.  Oh, my brother,
  If I should die before you had known the mercy of Jesus,
  Yea, I think it would sadden the hope of glory within me!”

  Neither yet had the will of the sinner yielded an answer;
  But from his lips there broke a cry of unspeakable anguish,
  Wild and fierce and shrill, as if some demon within him
  Rent his soul with the ultimate pangs of fiendish possession,
  And with the outstretched arms of bewildered imploring toward them,
  Death-white unto the people he turned his face from the darkness.