I wish I could be dyin’ here to rise a spirit light,
If them above ’ud let me win you joy.
And now I wish no wishes, nor ever fall a tear;
Nor take a thought beyond the way I’m led:
I mind the day that’s overby, and bless the day that’s near,
Then be to come—a day, when we’ll be dead;
A longer, lighter day, when we’ll be dead.”
Mary read this quickly, with a catch in her breath; then slowly; finally with eyes so dim, that she could scarcely distinguish the words, and her tears pattered down upon the pages.
This pathetic and touching lament reopened the gates of the poor girl’s grief. Misery stalked in, and resumed the seat from which, time, youth, and summer, had almost dislodged her.
Fifteen months previously, a brother officer on the trooper had given the book to Ulick. Ulick, still smarting from his separation, had found that the lines exactly interpreted his own feelings, and in a spasm of imprudent impulse had posted the book to Mary the very day he landed in Bombay.