th a
gasp, as from a freed breast, for his strength was going fast, fell
back in a kind of swoon. Yes, he was delivered from the power of the
dog, for after that, when he woke, it was in a different mood. He knew
Ben, but he thought he had little Ambrose sitting on his pillow; held
his arm as if his baby were in it, and talked to them smiling and
tenderly, as if glad they had come to him, and he were enjoying their
caresses, their brightness, and beauty. Nor did the peace pass away.
He was so quiet that all hoped except George Yolland, who knew the
mischief had become irreparable; and though he never was actually
sensible, the borderland was haunted no more with images of evil or of
terror, but with the fair visions fit for "him that overcometh." Once
they thought he fancied he was showing his children to Viola or to me.
Once, when Dermot's face came before him, he recurred to some of the
words used in the struggle about Viola.

"I don't deserve her. Good things are not for me. All will be made
pure there."

They thought then that he was himself, and knew he was dying, but the
next moment some words, evidently addressed to his child, showed them
he was not in our world; and after that all the murmurs were about what
had last taken up his mind--the Bread of Heaven, the Fruit of
Everlasting Life.

"To him that overcometh will I give to eat of the Fruit of the Tree of
Life, which is in the midst of the Paradise of God." That was what Mr.
Yolland ventured now to say over him, and it woke the last respondent
glance of his eyes. He had tasted of that Feast of Life on the Sunday
he was alone, and Ben Yolland would even then have given it to him, but
before it could be arranged, he could no longer swallow, and the
affection of the brain was fast blocking up the senses, so that
blindness and deafness came on, and passed into that insensibility in
which the last struggles of life are, as they tell us, rather agonising
to the beholder than to the sufferer. It was at sundown at last that
the mightiest and gentlest spirit I ever knew was set free.

Those three durst not wait to mourn. Their first duty was to hasten
the burial, so as to prevent the spread of contagion, and they went at
once their different ways to make the preparations. No form of
conventional respect could be used, but it was the three who so deeply
loved him who laid him in the rough-made coffin, hastily put together
the same evening, with the cross