“And yet, if you can believe it, we were strangely happy even there, for the Lord was in the midst of us, as surely as He is here amid this peace and loveliness.  When we are holding Him by the hand, feeling His presence, seeing His face in the darkness, believing that it is His will for us to be there, it is strange how the darkness becomes light, the suffering ceases, the horror all passes away.  I do not mean that the enemy does not intervene—­that he does not come and with his whispers seek to shake our faith, to cloud our spirits, to shroud us in darkness and obscurity.  But thanks be to God, His Son, having overcome temptation in human flesh, we in His strength, by Him, and through Him, and in Him, have power to overcome.  Satan came; but he did not stay, for One that was mightier was with us.  Thanks be to God who giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.”

That was all he ever spoke of the prison life—­no word of its hardships and sufferings, only of the power of the Lord to take away the bitterness, and to comfort, cheer, and strengthen.  And so they ceased to think or to speak of it, too.  It had not hurt him.  The iron had never entered into his soul.  And almost by now he had forgotten.  All was peace and joy and love.  And even the knowledge that his companions had passed away was no trouble to him.

“We shall meet so soon again,” he said, and the light deepened in his eyes.  “I am so curious to know how it is with the departed—­whether they lie at rest as in a heaven-sent sleep, while their heart waketh; or whether the Lord has work for them beyond the grave, into which they enter at once.  I long to know what that blessed state is like, where we are with Christ, yet not in the glory of the resurrection, but awaiting that at His good pleasure.  Well, soon all this will be made known to me; and I cannot doubt we shall meet again in joy and love those with whom we have walked in fellowship upon this earth, and that we shall in turn await those who follow after into peace, and so with them look forward to the glorious day when the living shall be changed and the dead receive their bodies back, glorified in resurrection life, and so enter all together into the presence of God, presented as one holy mystical body to Him, the Bride of the Lamb.”

There was just one shadow that fell for a moment athwart the perfect peace and joy of this departure.  But it was not one that could touch his spirit for more than a moment.

As he felt life slipping fast away, and knew that very soon he must say farewell to earth and its sorrows and joys, he called Arthur to his side and asked: 

“Will they admit me to the rite of the Holy Communion before I die?”

It was a question which Arthur had foreseen, and he had himself taken a special journey to Oxford to see the dean upon that very point.

But Clarke still lay beneath the ban of excommunication.  He was still regarded as a heretic; and although, after all he had passed through, much sympathy was expressed for him, and any further cruelty was strongly deprecated, yet the law of the church forbade that the holy thing should be touched by unhallowed hands, or pass unhallowed lips.