at you will lift him up
and make him worthy----"

She silenced me with a quick, glad cry, and, winding both her arms
about my neck, she hid her face from me.

"My friend! Jasper, dear Jasper, you shall not say that! Ah, were you
so blind that you have not known it from the first?"

Her words were like the echo of some sweet music in my ears. Little
Ruth, my beloved, had called me "friend." To my life's end would I
claim that name most precious.

* * *

We were picked up by the American war-ship Hatteras ten days after the
sleep-time passed. I left the island as I found it--its secrets hidden,
its mysteries unfathomed. What vapour rises up there--whether it be, as
Doctor Gray would have it, from the bog of decaying vegetation, which
breathes fever to the south; whether it be this marsh fog steaming up
when the plants die down; or whether it be a subtler cloud given out by
the very earth itself--this question, I say, let the learned dispute. I
have done with it forever; and never, to my life's end, shall I see its
heights and its valleys again. The world calls me; I go to my home.
Ruth, little Ruth, whom I have loved, is at my side. For us it shall be
sun-time always; the night and the dreadful sleep are no more.

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