“Leave you alone in the house—­with a corpse?”

“Run—­run!  Tell the doctor to hurry.  He may do something.”

As the old servant disappeared, Regina fell on her knees, and seizing the right hand, carried it to her lips; then began to chafe it violently between her own trembling palms.

“O Lord, spare him a little while!  Spare him till his sister comes?”

She rushed into the library, procured some brandy which was kept in the medicine chest, and with the aid of a spoon tried to force some down his throat, but the muscles refused to relax, and, pouring the brandy on her handkerchief, she rubbed his face and the hand she had already chafed.  In the left he tightly held the jasmine, as when he spoke to her last, and she shrank from touching those fingers.

Finding no change in the fixed white face she took off his shoes and rubbed his feet with mustard, but no effect encouraged her, and finally she sat, praying silently, holding the feet tenderly against her heart.

How long lasted that lonely vigil with the dead, she never knew.  Hope deserted her, and by degrees she realized the awful truth that the arrival of the physician so impatiently expected would bring no succour.  How bitterly she upbraided herself for leaving him a moment, even though in obedience to his wishes.  Perhaps he had called and the organ had drowned his voice.

Had he died while she sang, and was his spirit already with God when she repeated the words “Far away in the regions of the blest”?  When she came on tiptoe, and asked, “Are you asleep?” was he indeed verily “Asleep in Jesus”?  While she waited, fearful of disturbing his slumber, was his released and rejoicing soul nearing the pearly battlements of the City of Rest, lead by God’s most pitying and tender angel, loving yet silent Death?

When will humanity reject and disown the hideous, ruthless monster its own disordered fancy fashioned, and accept instead the beautiful Oriental Azrael, the most ancient “Help of God,” who is sent in infinite mercy to guide the weary soul into the blessed realm of Peace?

“O Land!  O Land! 
For all the broken-hearted,
The mildest herald by our fate allotted—­
Beckons, and with inverted torch doth stand,
To lead us with a gentle hand
Into the Land of the great departed,—­
Into the Silent Land.”

When the solemn silence that hung like a pall over the parsonage was broken by the hurried tread of many feet and the confused sound of strange voices, Regina seemed to be aroused from some horrible lethargy, and gazed despairingly at the doctor.

“It is too late.  You can’t do anything for him now,” she said, clinging to his feet, as an attempt was made to lift them from her lap.

“He must have been dead several hours,” answered Dr. Melville.

“None but God and the angels know when he died.  I thought he had gone to sleep; and so indeed he had.”