"Ah! glad to see ye, Ned Franks, always glad to see ye!" cried Ben Stone, holding out both his hands to the school-master of Colme. "I sent my Bell off to afternoon church, for I said, says I, there will be Ned Franks sure to drop in and give me a bit of the news. There, take a chair, my good fellow, you're always heartily welcome."
Stone himself was reclining on a bed, and well propped up with soft cushions; a flannel dressing-gown wrapped round his large form, and a scarlet shawl over that, with a red nightcap on his head. There was an air of comfort and of neatness visible in the partly darkened room. Stone liked, as he said, "to have things look respectable-like" about him. The appearance of the sick man would have conveyed to none but a practised eye the idea of serious illness. There was no wasted cheek, no hollow eye, to tell the insidious fatal disease within. Even the voice of Ben Stone, though not perhaps as strong, sounded as jovial as ever. Franks could hardly realize, as he drew his chair near to the bed, that he who rested upon it was actually dying by inches. Ned made inquiries how the patient was feeling that afternoon.
"Not just up to felling an oak-tree, or splitting it up into planks," said the carpenter, gayly; "the doctor says I can't last till winter; but who knows? 'the greatest clerks are not always the wisest men,' as good Queen Bess once said."
"No one can indeed know whether you or I will be taken first," observed Ned; "but it's well to be prepared for the end, whether it comes sooner or later than we have been led to expect."
"Yes, yes, I'm not one of those as is afraid of hearing the worst," said Stone, still in the same easy manner. "Death must come one day or another to all, and it's no such great odds when we go."
"The question is certainly not when, but whither we go," remarked Franks.
"There's the comfort of religion," said the carpenter, complacently folding his hands. "Don't we all hope to go to heaven when we die?"
"Yes, heaven's the port we all hope to land in," replied Ned Franks; "but I should just like, neighbor, for us to talk the matter over a little together; to see if you and I have embarked in the same boat, since we wish our cruise to end in the same harbor. Would you mind now telling an old friend what reason you have for thinking that you're bound for heaven?"
Ben Stone looked half perplexed, half amused, at the question. "It's not for a man to speak up for himself," he said good-humoredly; "but you and all the village know that I've not wandered far astray. I don't pretend to be such an out-and-out saint as you are," he added with a smile; "but I'm not worse than my neighbors, and I don't doubt but that we'll both land in heaven at last."