“What’s a general?” she inquired presently.
“A soldier,” I answered, walking on again.
“Like father?”
“In some respects.”
“I remember,” she said at last. “I was trying to recollect the word and now I have done so. No, he isn’t a general. I don’t think he has ever led an army. When we go to the city father will take you to see him, for he is at home now.”
“Has he a house there?”
“He shares one with some friends, for he is not married yet. Sometimes when people are dying on the earth he goes there and makes their death-bed. He makes them very gently, so that the spiritual pain is eased. But those hideous demons that gather round such scenes fasten themselves upon his arms and hands, and hinder him by bites and clinging hard, so that he oftentimes can scarcely do his work.”
“But where is the guardian angel of the dying man?”
“He has none,” she answered sadly. “He may have driven him off, or turned from him as they so often do. And those are the kind of cases Philemon goes to help, because he has studied them. It is no good trying to help them whilst they live, but our people are bound to keep the record of their works just as they do in hell, and it is from this record that he studies. Then when he has made the bed so miraculously that no slavish hand can touch it he waits alone, unguarded, for by this the demons have fled away in terror. At last the great enemy comes.”
“Is that death?”