She raised her face as if to entreat for yet a moment's respite. But their faces were radiant, transfigured with the joy of their faith. And then suddenly, certainly, in their rapture she saw the purpose and end of all their common sufferings; want, hunger, years of pinching and striving, a thousand petty daily vexations, all the hardships that had worn her mother down to this poor corpse upon the bed, her own sorrowful fate and her sisters' only less sorrowful—all caught up in the hand of God and blazing as a two-edged sword of flame. Across the blaze, though he was far away, she saw the confident eyes of Charles smiling as at a prophecy fulfilled. But the hand outstretched for the sword was John's, claiming it by right indefeasible. She, too, had a right indefeasible: and before the sword descended to cleave the walls of this humble death chamber and stretch over England, her heart cried and claimed to be pierced with it. "Let it pierce me and cut deep, for my tears, too, have tempered it!"
From the Journal of Charles Wesley for the year 1750:
"March 5th. I prayed by my sister Wright, a gracious, tender, trembling soul; a bruised reed which the Lord will not break.
"March 14th. I found my sister Wright very near the haven"; and again on Sunday, the 18th: "Yet still in darkness, doubts and fears, against hope believing in hope.
"March 21St. At four I called on my brother Wright, a few minutes after her spirit was set at liberty. I had sweet fellowship with her in explaining at the chapel those solemn words, 'Thy sun shall no more go down, neither shall thy moon withdraw itself; for the Lord shall be thy everlasting light, and the days of thy mourning shall be ended.'
"March 26th. I followed her to her quiet grave, and wept with them that weep."
EPILOGUE.
Early in December, 1803, in the cool decline of a torrid day, a small British force—mixed regulars and sepoys—threaded its way among the mountains of Berar. It moved slowly and with frequent halts, its pace regulated by the middle of the column, where teams of men panted and dragged at the six guns which were to batter down the hill fortress of Gawul Ghur: for roads in this country there were none, and all the long day ahead of the guns gangs laboured with pick and shovel to widen the foot-tracks leading up to the passes.
Still farther ahead trudged and halted the 74th regiment, following a squadron of the 19th Light Dragoons, and now and again the toilers on the middle slope, taking breath for a new effort and blinking the sweat from their eyes, would catch sight of a horseman on a ridge far overhead, silhouetted against the pale blue sky for a moment while he scanned a plateau or gully unseen by them. Now and again, too, in such pauses, the clear air pulsed with the tramp of the rearguard in the lower folds of the hills—sepoys and comrades of the 78th and 94th.
Though with arms, legs and loins strained almost to cracking, the men worked cheerfully. Their General had ridden forward with his staff: they knew that close by the head of the pass their camp was already being marked out for them, and before sleeping they would be fed as they deserved.