alled upon to take up; and now that he is fainting under it, be Thou his
stay, and do Thou succor him that is tempted! Let his manifold
infirmities come between him and Thy judgment; in wrath remember mercy!
If his eyes are not opened to all Thy truth, let Thy compassion lighten
the darkness that rests upon him, even as it came through the word of thy
Son to blind Bartimeus, who sat by the wayside, begging!

Many more petitions he uttered, but all in the same subdued tone of
tenderness. In the presence of helpless suffering, and in the
fast-darkening shadow of the Destroyer, he forgot all but his Christian
humanity, and cared more about consoling his fellow-man than making a
proselyte of him.

This was the last prayer to which the Little Gentleman ever listened.
Some change was rapidly coming over him during this last hour of which I
have been speaking. The excitement of pleading his cause before his
self-elected spiritual adviser,--the emotion which overcame him, when the
young girl obeyed the sudden impulse of her feelings and pressed her lips
to his cheek,--the thoughts that mastered him while the divinity-student
poured out his soul for him in prayer, might well hurry on the inevitable
moment. When the divinity-student had uttered his last petition,
commending him to the Father through his Son's intercession, he turned to
look upon him before leaving his chamber. His face was changed.--There
is a language of the human countenance which we all understand without an
interpreter, though the lineaments belong to the rudest savage that ever
stammered in an unknown barbaric dialect. By the stillness of the
sharpened features, by the blankness of the tearless eyes, by the
fixedness of the smileless mouth, by the deadening tints, by the
contracted brow, by the dilating nostril, we know that the soul is soon
to leave its mortal tenement, and is already closing up its windows and
putting out its fires.--Such was the aspect of the face upon which the
divinity-student looked, after the brief silence which followed his
prayer. The change had been rapid, though not that abrupt one which is
liable to happen at any moment in these cases.--The sick man looked
towards him.--Farewell,--he said,--I thank you. Leave me alone with her.

When the divinity-student had gone, and the Little Gentleman found
himself alone with Iris, he lifted his hand to his neck, and took from
it, suspended by a slender chain, a quaint, antique-looki