And give my heavy-laden spirit rest,
And grant me what He will—­His will is best. 
I go—­I know not where,
Upward or down, or toward the setting sun
None knows,—­some shadowy goal is won,
Some unseen issue near,
So oft with death I journeyed hand in hand,
The spectral pageant of his border land
I do not fear.

* * * * *

Weep not when I have passed, but go thy way,
Thou art not portionless nor service free,
A warrior Sikh, for thee a high behest
Abides, to claim thy true-sword’s ministry. 
Go, Atma, from those echoing hillsides, lest
The haunting voices of the vanished say
’Vain is thy travail, poor thine utmost store,
We loved and laboured, lo, we are no more,’
And thy fond heart in fealty to our clay
Fail in allegiance to the name we bore. 
Go, seek thy kinsman, to a brother’s hand
I gave possession of a gem more fair,
More costly far than gold, than rubies rare,
Thy part and heritage, of him demand
Its just bestowal, and with dauntless tread
Pursue the pathway of thy holy dead.”

When the old Sikh had ceased speaking, he lay greatly exhausted.  The night deepened.  It was a remote spot.  Now and then the sound of trampling feet or the tread of a horse climbing the difficult road reached the ear.  The hours were long and dreary, but they passed.  Morning dawned, and Atma found himself alone.  He had known that it would be so, and yet it came with the sharpness of an unexpected blow.  He mourned, and, as is the way with mourners, he accused himself from hour to hour of having failed in duty to the departed during his lifetime.  Looking on the face of the dead, he wondered much where the spirit that so lately had seemed to be with the frame but a single identity, one and indivisible, had fled.  He recalled his father’s words,

     “Upward or down, or toward the setting sun,
     None knows,”

and with the recollection, the sense of loss deepened.  An old cry rose to his lips, “Oh, that I knew where I might find him!”

The words by which his father had sought to comfort him still sounded in his hearing, but Grief is stronger than Wisdom.  Human speech is the least potent of forces, and arguments that clash and clang bravely in the tournament of words, slaying shadows, and planting the flag of triumph over fallen fancies, on entering the lists to combat the fact of Death, but beat the air, and their lusty prowess only fetches a laugh from out of the silence.

CHAPTER III.