"Then you and I must do it."
"Willingly—where you lead I follow."
"Come up the stairs."
They went to the dormitory; took the sad burden, wrapped in the bed-clothing as it was, and bore it to the grave; the priest said the burial office; the grave-digger filled up the grave; and all was over with poor Gaspard.
But before that sun set the Chaplain was called to brother John, and that same night the poor fellow died of the fever—fear, doubtless, having been a predisposing cause.
The terror began; the facts could not long be concealed. At Evensong that night the Chaplain spoke to them in a short address, so full of vivid faith and Christian hope that those who heard it never forgot it.—"Why should they fear death? They had led a living death, a dying life, these many years. Their exile was over. The Father called them home. They had long done with this wretched world. The Christian's true fatherland was Heaven."
So he spoke rather like an Angel than a man. But they could not all rise to it—how could it be expected? life clings to life. When Newgate was on fire in the great riots, the most anxious to be saved were some condemned criminals left for execution on the morrow.
But for a select few, all fear was gone.
Such men were needed: they had their senses about them; they could help others to the last; they, and they alone, dared to attend the dying, to bury the dead.
Now came the great trial—the confinement. The lepers mutinied against being shut up with death, they longed for liberty, they panted for it; they would not be imprisoned with the plague.