The minister of Westbury approached the bedside.

“Venerable Father Hooper,” said he, “the moment of your release is at hand.  Are you ready for the lifting of the veil that shuts in time from eternity?”

Father Hooper at first replied merely by a feeble motion of his head; then—­apprehensive, perhaps, that his meaning might be doubtful—­he exerted himself to speak.

“Yea,” said he, in faint accents; “my soul hath a patient weariness until that veil be lifted.”

“And is it fitting,” resumed the Reverend Mr. Clark, “that a man so given to prayer, of such a blameless example, holy in deed and thought, so far as mortal judgment may pronounce,—­is it fitting that a father in the Church should leave a shadow on his memory that may seem to blacken a life so pure?  I pray you, my venerable brother, let not this thing be!  Suffer us to be gladdened by your triumphant aspect as you go to your reward.  Before the veil of eternity be lifted let me cast aside this black veil from your face;” and, thus speaking, the Reverend Mr. Clark bent forward to reveal the mystery of so many years.

But, exerting a sudden energy that made all the beholders stand aghast, Father Hooper snatched both his hands from beneath the bedclothes and pressed them strongly on the black veil, resolute to struggle if the minister of Westbury would contend with a dying man.

“Never!” cried the veiled clergyman.  “On earth, never!”

“Dark old man,” exclaimed the affrighted minister, “with what horrible crime upon your soul are you now passing to the judgment?”

Father Hooper’s breath heaved:  it rattled in his throat; but, with a mighty effort grasping forward with his hands, he caught hold of life and held it back till he should speak.  He even raised himself in bed, and there he sat shivering with the arms of Death around him, while the black veil hung down, awful at that last moment in the gathered terrors of a lifetime.  And yet the faint, sad smile so often there now seemed to glimmer from its obscurity and linger on Father Hooper’s lips.

“Why do you tremble at me alone?” cried he, turning his veiled face round the circle of pale spectators.  “Tremble also at each other.  Have men avoided me and women shown no pity and children screamed and fled only for my black veil?  What but the mystery which it obscurely typifies has made this piece of crape so awful?  When the friend shows his inmost heart to his friend, the lover to his best-beloved; when man does not vainly shrink from the eye of his Creator, loathsomely treasuring up the secret of his sin,—­then deem me a monster for the symbol beneath which I have lived and die.  I look around me, and, lo! on every visage a black veil!”

While his auditors shrank from one another in mutual affright, Father Hooper fell back upon his pillow, a veiled corpse with a faint smile lingering on the lips.  Still veiled, they laid him in his coffin, and a veiled corpse they bore him to the grave.  The grass of many years has sprung up and withered on that grave, the burial-stone is moss-grown, and good Mr. Hooper’s face is dust; but awful is still the thought that it mouldered beneath the black veil.