“Well, not much. I asked him how he felt, as an experiment, you see, sir, and to find out whether he could understand anything; and he did understand, for he began to tell me, and he dropped off to sleep. You see he is sleeping naturally, sir.”
“Yes, I see. Well, Longman, it is one o’clock. Go to bed. I will relieve your watch,” said the rector, sinking into the large easy-chair beside the patient.
Longman made some resistance to this proposal, but Mr. Campbell was firm, and sent off the wearied nurse to take his much needed rest.
The ill man rested well for some hours, and then moaned in his sleep.
The watcher gave him a cooling and strengthening beverage, just as Longman had done, and the patient sank again into sleep, muttering:
“I can’t be in hell, after all, for in hell no one comes from heaven to put a cool——” Then his words became inaudible until he dropped into unconsciousness with the last word—“purgatory”—on his failing tongue.
All the remainder of the night he slept well, only occasionally muttering in his sleep:
“Not in hell, after all—only in purgatory—not such a bad place.”
In the morning when the doctor came to make his daily visit he found the ill man sleeping quietly and Mr. Campbell and Longman sitting by his bed.
He examined the patient’s pulse and temperature without waking him, and then took the two watchers’ report.