“Why distress yourself with sad forebodings?  Weakness makes you despondent, but you must try to hope for the best; and I dare say in a few days, you will have good news from your mother.”

“I shook hands with Hope, and in her place sits the only companion who will abide with me during the darkness that is coming on—­ Patience, pale-browed, meek-eyed, sad-lipped Patience.  If I can only keep my hold upon her skirts, till the end.  To me, no good news can ever come.  As long as mother lived, I had an incentive to struggle; now I am alone, and they who thirst for my blood are welcome to take it speedily.  I know my mother is dead; I have seen her.”

“Wake up, child.  Your brain is weak yet and full of queer delirious visions, and when you doze, realities and dreams are all jumbled together.  You have a deal too much sense to harbor any crazy spiritual crankiness.  Take your wine, and lie down.  You have sat up too long, and tired yourself.”

“No.  I have wanted to tell you for several days, because you have been so good, and I have heard you praying here at night that God would be merciful to me; but I waited until I had strength to be calm.  I have lain here day after day, and night after night, face to face with desolation and despair, and now I have grown accustomed to the horror.  I know that in this world there is no escape, no help, no hope; so—­the worst is over.  When you consent to fate, and stretch out your arms to meet death, there is no more terror, only waiting, weary waiting.  I am not superstitious, and unfortunately I am not one of the victims of dementia, whose spectral woes are born of disordered brains.  I am sadly sane; and what I am about to tell you is no figment of feverish fancy.  I do not know how long I have been sick, but one night great peace and ease came suddenly upon me.  I swung in some soft tender arms, close to the gates of Release, and the iron bars melted away, and my soul was borne toward the wonderful light; but suddenly a shock, a strange thrill ran through me, and the bars rose again, and the light faded.  Then all at once my father and my mother stood beside me, bent over me.  Father said:  ‘Courage, my daughter, courage!  Bear your cross a little longer,’ My mother wept, and said, ’My good little girl.  So faithful, so true.  I died in peace, trusting your promise.  For my sake can you endure till the end?’ They faded away; and sorrow sat down once more, clutching my heart; and death, the Angel who keeps the key of the Gate of Release, turned his back upon me.  I had almost escaped; I was close to the other world, and I was conscious.  I saw my mother’s spirit; it was no delirious fancy.  I know that she is dead.  Even in the world of the released, she grieves over the awful consequences of my obedience to her wishes.  Mortal agony of body and soul brings us so near to the borderland, that we have glimpses; and those we love, lean across the boundary line and compassionate us.  So my Gethsemane called down the one strengthening Angel of all the heavenly hosts, who had most power to comfort my heart, and gird me for my fate, my father, my noble father.  God, in pity, sent him to exhort me to bear my cross bravely.”