She gave him yet another look, a fleeting one which he did not see.  Then she softly opened the door and passed into the room of the dying man.  Stephen followed her.  As for Clarence, he stood for a space staring after them.  Then he went noiselessly down the stairs into the street.

CHAPTER XI

LEAD, KINDLY LIGHT

When the Judge opened his eyes for the last time in this world, they fell first upon the face of his old friend, Colonel Carvel.  Twice he tried to speak his name, and twice he failed.  The third time he said it faintly.

“Comyn!”

“Yes, Silas.”

“Comyn, what are you doing here?

“I reckon I came to see you, Silas,” answered the Colonel.

“To see me die,” said the Judge, grimly.

Colonel Carvel’s face twitched, and the silence in that little room seemed to throb.

“Comyn,” said the Judge again, “I heard that you had gone South to fight against your country.  I see you here.  Can it be that you have at last returned in your allegiances to the flag for which your forefathers died?”

Poor Colonel Carvel

“I am still of the same mind, Silas,” he said.

The Judge turned his face away, his thin lips moving as in prayer.  But they knew that he was not praying, “Silas,” said Mr. Carvel, “we were friends for twenty years.  Let us be friends again, before—­”

“Before I die,” the Judge interrupted, “I am ready to die.  Yes, I am ready.  I have had a hard life, Comyn, and few friends.  It was my fault.  I—­I did not know how to make them.  Yet no man ever valued those few more than!  But,” he cried, the stern fire unquenched to the last, “I would that God had spared me to see this Rebellion stamped out.  For it will be stamped out.”  To those watching, his eyes seemed fixed on a distant point, and the light of prophecy was in them.  “I would that God had spared me to see this Union supreme once more.  Yes, it will be supreme.  A high destiny is reserved for this nation—!  I think the highest of all on this earth.”  Amid profound silence he leaned back on the pillows from which he had risen, his breath coming fast.  None dared look at the neighbor beside them.

It was Stephen’s mother who spoke.  “Would you not like to see a clergyman, Judge?” she asked.

The look on his face softened as he turned to her.

“No, madam,” he answered; “you are clergyman enough for me.  You are near enough to God—­there is no one in this room who is not worthy to stand in the presence of death.  Yet I wish that a clergyman were here, that he might listen to one thing I have to say.  When I was a boy I worked my way down the river to New York, to see the city.  I met a bishop there.  He said to me, ’Sit down, my son, I want to talk to you.  I know your father in Albany.  You are Senator Whipple’s son.’  I said to him, ’No, sir, I am not Senator Whipple’s