I obeyed.

“Do I look like a murderer?”

“I don’t know.”

“Don’t turn your eyes away; do you know what certain words in this world mean?”

“Signal one, and I will answer.”

He looked so leonic that I felt the least bit in the world like running away, but decided to stay, as he was just within my pathway of escape.

“Do you know what it is, what it means, when a human soul calls out from its highest heights to another mortal, ’Thou art mine’?”

I do not think he expected an answer, but I answered a round, full, truthful, “No.”

“Then let it be the theme of thanksgiving,” he said.  “That fair young girl is here now.  I feel her sacred presence.  She does not save me from my imperious will.

“Do you know, Miss Percival,” he suddenly resumed, “do you know that you are here with Abraham Axtell, a man who has destroyed two lives:  one slowly, surely, through years of suffering; the other, oh! the other—­by a flash from God’s wrath, and for eighteen years my soul has cried out to her, ‘Thou art mine,’ and yet there is no response on earth, there can be none?  Would you know the name of my preserver that night, come,”—­and, bending down, he offered his hand to assist me in rising.

I had no faith in this man’s murderousness, whatever he might have done.  He led me around to the head-stone of the grave which he had asked my knowledge of.  Before I could see, he passed his hand across my eyes:  how cold it was!

“When you see the name recorded here,” he said, “you will know who saved me that August night, whom my terrible will destroyed, drinking her young life up in one fell cup.”

His hand was withdrawn for one moment; my sight was blinded with the cold pressure on my eyes; then I read,—­

  MARY,
  DAUGHTER OF
  JULIUS AND MARY PERCIVAL,

DIED AUGUST 30th, 1843, AGED 17 YEARS.

“My sister,” I said

“Your sister, whom I killed.”

“Ere I was old enough to know her.”

“Have you one drop of mercy for him who destroyed your sister?” he asked,—­and his haughty will was suffused in pleading.

I thought of the third figure in the celestial picture, as it gazed upon the outstretched hand, and I said,—­

“God hath not made me your judge; why should I refuse mercy?”

A flash of intuition came.  The young girl, whose portrait was in the house of the Axtells, whose face had been next my mother’s, who asked me to do something for her on the earth,—­could they all be manifestations of Mary?

“Who painted the portrait in your house?” I asked.

“My will,” he said; “I am no artist.”

“Is it like Mary?”

“Yes.”

“Then I have this day seen her.”

He looked up, great tears falling from his eyes, and asked,—­

“Where?”

I took him to the gallery of the clouds, and showed him my vision, and repeated the words spoken to me up there, the words for him only,—­the others were full of mystery still.  He held seemingly no part therein.