“But I shall not lose it; it has been with me in many moods—­and my moods are many and very variable, as you know.  I can’t express it in words; but I feel no more doubt about Edward’s well-being, no more inclination to fret or murmur, besides an all-embracing and pervading sense of satisfied content that penetrates everywhere and applies itself to everything; those are the chief manifestations.

“It is as if he had come to me himself and whispered that all was well, or, better still, as if the great Power that held both him and me and all men within His grasp, had sent His messenger to strengthen me.  My friend, all the struggles and miseries of my life have paled to nothing in the light of this.  If this is to be won by suffering, pray that you may suffer; though I feel, indeed, as if I had not earned or deserved a tenth part of it—­it is the free gift of God.  It is to this that we shall all come.”

He still lived at Tredennis; spending much of his time in visiting and talking to the people round about, the cottagers and farmers.  He was very weak in the mornings, and mostly read, or often was too feeble even for that; but later in the day his strength used somewhat to revive, and he would walk along the lanes with Flora, now growing older and more sedate, trotting by him.  He was known and loved in the circle of the hills.  “Oh, sir,” as a poor woman said to me, with tears in her eyes, after he was gone, “I can’t tell you how it was—­he spoke very little of Him—­but he seemed to remind me of the Lord Jesus, if I am not wrong to say it, more than all Mr. Robert’s sermons or the pictures in the school-house.  He was so kind and gentle; he seemed to bring God with him!”

But the end was not far off.  He got very much weaker in the spring:  he suffered from violent paroxysms of pain, depriving him of sight and power of speech, and wearing him out terribly.  On the 21st of April I was telegraphed for; he wished to see me.

I came in the evening; he was conscious, and seemed glad to see me, though he was very weak.  He said to me, “When I was at Cambridge, my windows overlooked a space of grass, very evenly green in the spring; but in a hot summer the lines of old foundations and buildings used to come out, burning the grass above them with the heat they retained; it is just the same,” he added, “with things that I thought I had forgotten—­they come out very truthfully now.”

He often spoke to me of his grief that he had never seen Edward’s face after he left Tredennis to go to Cambridge, for he had been fearfully disfigured, cut and bruised by the accident, and he had no picture of him; “But perhaps it is because I was too fond of his face,” he said.

He had several terrible spasms while I was with him, and the doctor said that if he had such another he could not last out the night.  Once, after waking from the prolonged and weary sleep of prostration which used to follow these collapses, he said to me, with a smile, “I saw him.”