`"Hear me now, then, Arthur," said I, gently pressing his hand.

`"It's too late now," said he despondently. And after that another paroxysm of pain came on; and then his mind began to wander, and we feared his death was approaching; but an opiate was administered, his sufferings began to abate, he gradually became more composed, and at length sank into a kind of slumber. He has been quieter since; and now Hattersley has left him, expressing a hope that he shall find him better when he calls to-morrow.

`"Perhaps, I may recover," he replied, "who knows?--this may have been the crisis. What do you think, Helen?"

`Unwilling to depress him, I gave the most cheering answer I could, but still recommended him to prepare for the possibility of what I only feared was but too certain. But he was determined to hope Shortly after, he relapsed into a kind of doze--but now he groans again.

`There is a change. Suddenly he called me to his side, with such a strange, excited manner that I feared he was delirious--but he was not. "That was the crisis, Helen!" said he delightedly. "I had an infernal pain here--it is quite gone now; I never was so easy since the fall.bite gone, by Heaven!" and he clasped and kissed my hand in the very fullness of his heart; but, finding I did not participate his joy, he quickly flung it from him, and bitterly cursed my coldness and insensibility. How could I reply? Kneeling beside him, I took his hand and fondly pressed it to my lips--for the first time since our separation--and told him as well as tears would let me speak, that it was not that that kept me silent; it was the fear that this sudden cessation of pain was not so favourable a symptom as he supposed.a immediately sent for the doctor. We are now anxiously awaiting him: I will tell you what he says. There is still the same freedom from pain--the same deadness to all sensation where the suffering was most acute.

`My worst fears are realized--mortification has commenced. The doctor has told him there is no hope--no words can describe his anguish--I can write no more.'

-------------

The next was still more distressing in the tenor of its contents. The sufferer was fast approaching dissolution-- ragged almost to the verge of that awful chasm he trembled to contemplate, from which no agony of prayers or tears could save him. Nothing could comfort him now: Hattersley's rough attempts at consolation were utterly in vain. The world was nothing to him: life and all its interests, its petty cares and transient pleasures were a cruel mockery. To talk of the past, was to torture him with vain remorse; to refer to the future, was to increase his anguish; and yet to be silent, was to leave him a prey to his own regrets and apprehensions. Often he dwelt with shuddering minuteness on the fate of his perishing clay--the slow, piece-meal dissolution already invading his frame; the shroud, the coffin, the dark, lonely grave, and all the horrors of corruption.

`If I try,' said his afflicted wife, `to divert him from these things--to raise his thoughts to higher themes, it is no better:--"Worse and worse!" he groans. "If there be really life beyond the tomb, and judgment after death, how can I face it?"--I cannot do him any good; he will neither be enlightened, nor roused, nor comforted by anything I say; and yet he clings to me with unrelenting pertinacity--with a kind of childish desperation, as if I could save him from the fate he dreads. He keeps me night and day beside him. He is holding my left hand now, while I write; he has held it thus for hours: sometimes quietly, with his pale face upturned to mine: sometimes clutching my arm with violence:--the big drops starting from his forehead, at the thoughts of what he sees, or thinks he sees before him. If I withdraw my hand for a moment, it distresses him:--

`"Stay with me, Helen," he says; "let me hold you so: it seems as if harm could not reach me while you are here. But death will comet is coming now--fast, fast!--and--oh, if I could believe there was nothing after!'

"Don't try to believe it, Arthur; there is joy and glory after, if you will but try to reach it!"


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