“Cum sanctis tuis in aeternum,” answered the four: and one taper only remained.
The Master threw back his hood, and turned his dreadful eyes straight upon the living Anthony Ffryar: he threw his hand across the bier and held him tight. “Cras tu eris mecum,”[4] he muttered, as if in antiphonal reply to the dirge-chanters.
With a hiss and a sputter the last candle expired.
The hiss and the sputter and a sudden sense of gloom recalled Ffryar to the waking world. Alas for labouring science, alas for the fame of Ffryar, alas for humanity, dying and doomed to die! The vessel containing the wonderful brew which should have redeemed the world had fallen over and dislodged its contents on the fire below. An accident reparable, surely, within a few hours; but not by Anthony Ffryar. How the night passed with him no mortal can tell. All that is known further of him is written in the register of All Saints’ parish. If you can discover the ancient volume containing the records of the year 1551—and I am not positive that it now exists—you will find it written:
“Die Augusti xiii
Buryalls in Jhesus churchyarde
Goodman Laycock }
Anthony Ffryar }of yᵉ sicknesse”
Whether he really died of “the sweat” I cannot say. But that the living man was sung to his grave by the dead, who were his sole companions in Jesus College, on the night of August 12, 1551, is as certain and indisputable as any other of the facts which are here set forth in the history of Anthony Ffryar.
FOOTNOTES:
[4] Samuel xxvii. 19.