id 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 son. I am no relation of his.' If the bishop had
wished to talk to me after that, Mrs. Brice, he might have made my life a
little easier--a little sweeter. I know that they are not all like that.
But it was by just such things that I was embittered when I was a boy."
He stopped, and when he spoke again, it was more slowly, more gently,
than any of them had heard him speak in all his life before. "I wish that
some of the blessings which I am leaving now had come to me then--when I
was a boy. I might have done my little share in making the world a
brighter place to live in, as all of you have done. Yes, as all of you
are now doing for me. I am leaving the world with a better opinion of it
than I ever held in life. God hid the sun from me when I was a little
child. Margaret Brice," he said, "if I had had such a mother as you, I
would have been softened then. I thank God that He sent you when He did."

The widow bowed her head, and a tear fell upon his pillow.

"I have done nothing," she murmured, "nothing."

"So shall they answer at the last whom He has chosen," said the Judge. "I
was sick, and ye visited me. He has promised to remember those who do
that. Hold up your head, my daughter. God has been good to you. He has
given you a son whom all men may look in the face, of whom you need never
be ashamed. Stephen," said the Judge, "come here."

Stephen made his way to the bedside, but because of the moisture in his
eyes he saw but dimly the gaunt face. And yet he shrank back in awe at
the change in it. So must all of the martyrs have looked when the fire of
the faggots licked their feet. So must John Bunyan have s