“And when, in the madness of your distress, you tried again and again to drown yourself, as if there were no God, no life after death, no power to help in the Almighty; whose voice was it in your heart that bade you stop each time, and bade you hope?
“And, as you lay on that sick bed, and your life trembled in the balance, whose power was it that gave the turn to your distempered mind, instead of dealing with you after your sin, and rewarding you after your iniquity?”
Once more he paused. Then said in a yet lower tone of voice, almost in a whisper, but with perfect naturalness, “And far, far above all, when we were yet without strength, ungodly sinners, who was it signalized His love towards us by dying for us on the cross?”
More passed between the two friends that
night. But Cosin could elicit no definite promise from the other. He only said, with great emotion, as they parted,—
“Truest and best of friends, I shall think all night of these things.”
And he did turn and twist about for hours in his berth, so that more than once his fellow prisoners cried out angrily, “What is the matter with you, Tournier?” But he fell asleep towards morning, as soon as he had at last made up his mind that Fontenoy might kill him if he could, but he himself would fire into the ground.
As he went out in the morning he met the chaplain. He stopped him and said, “You are going, I see, to keep your appointment. Spare yourself the trouble. Your enemy has been struck down by another hand than yours. The Almighty has smitten him with paralysis. He is never likely to recover.”
But he did recover; and so we take our leave of him with the greatest possible pleasure.