"To the heavenly city, to see our mansions there."

"And who are these with you?"

"Strangers to me, until a little while ago; I know them better now.
But you I have known for a long time, John Weightman. Don't you
remember your old doctor?"

"Yes," he cried--"yes; your voice has not changed at all. I'm glad
indeed to see you, Doctor McLean, especially now. All this seems very
strange to me, almost oppressive. I wonder if--but may I go with you,
do you suppose?"

"Surely," answered the doctor, with his familiar smile; "it will do you
good. And you also must have a mansion in the city waiting for you--a
fine one, too--are you not looking forward to it?"

"Yes," replied the other, hesitating a moment; "yes--I believe it must
be so, although I had not expected to see it so soon. But I will go
with you, and we can talk by the way."

The two men quickly caught up with the other people, and all went
forward together along the road. The doctor had little to tell of his
experience, for it had been a plain, hard life, uneventfully spent for
others, and the story of the village was very simple. John Weightman's
adventures and triumphs would have made a far richer, more imposing
history, full of contacts with the great events and personages of the
time. But somehow or other he did not care to speak much about it,
walking on that wide heavenly moorland, under that tranquil, sunless
arch of blue, in that free air of perfect peace, where the light was
diffused without a shadow, as if the spirit of life in all things were
luminous.

There was only one person besides the doctor in that little company
whom John Weightman had known before--an old bookkeeper who had spent
his life over a desk, carefully keeping accounts--a rusty, dull little
man, patient and narrow, whose wife had been in the insane asylum for
twenty years and whose only child was a crippled daughter, for whose
comfort and happiness he had toiled and sacrificed himself without
stint. It was a surprise to find him here, as care-free and joyful as
the rest.

The lives of others in the company were revealed in brief glimpses as
they talked together--a mother, early widowed, who had kept her little
flock of children together and labored through hard and heavy years to
bring them up in purity and knowledge--a Sister of Charity who had
devoted herself to the nursing of poor folk who were being eaten to
death by cancer--a schoolmaster whose heart and life h