Dr. Langton signed to his daughters to come away. The patient had no strength for further greetings then. Freda's eyes were blind with tears as she found herself hurrying from the room, and Magdalen threw herself into her husband's arms, weeping aloud in the fulness of her heart. He held her closely to him; he too was deeply moved.
"But we must not grieve for him, my beloved; as he himself has said so many times during these days, 'To depart, and to be with Christ, is far better.' He goes forth so joyfully into the great unseen that we must not seek too much to hold him back. His Lord may have need of him elsewhere. In truth, he is more fit for heaven than earth."
"He dies a martyr, if any ever did!" spoke Freda, choking back her tears, and speaking with shining eyes. "He has laid down his life for a testimony to the truth. What martyr can do more than that?"
"Is there no hope of his life?" asked Magdalen, still clinging to her husband's arm.
"Your father fears not," answered Arthur; "and in sooth, after hearing the story of their imprisonment, I think the same myself. Oh, the patience, the sweetness, the self forgetfulness, with which he has borne all! One could weep tears of blood to think that such things are done to living saints on earth in the name of religion."
They looked breathlessly at Arthur, and he spoke again.
"I will not describe to you what we found when we entered the prison. Enough that one would not herd one's swine in such a place. Two out of the three were dying; and the third, though sick as you now see him, was yet dragging himself from one to the other, to minister to their still greater needs, as he had done from the first, giving to them of his own meagre food and water--neither of which was fit for human beings to touch--and enduring all the slow agonies of fevered thirst day after day, that their in some way be lightened.
"Sumner lived to tell us that. From the first Radley had sickened, as the strong men ofttimes do in such places more quickly than the weaker and feebler of body. Clarke, who had brought his body into subjection by fasting, who had nursed the sick in their filthy homes, and spent weeks at times in fever-stricken spots--he resisted longest the ravages of the fell prison fever. He and Sumner nursed Radley as best they might. Then Sumner fell sick, and Clarke had them both to care for.
"To the very last he tended them. Though well nigh in as evil a case, he yet would rise and crawl to them, and give them food and water, or moisten their lips when they could no longer eat the coarse prison fare. His patience and sweetness were not quite without effect even on the jailer, and from time to time he would bring them better food and a larger measure of water.
"But even so, there was none to help or succour them in their hour of extremest need. May God look down and judge the things which pass upon this earth, and are done by those who take His name freely upon their lips! He whose eyes see all things have seen those three men in their prison house. May He be the judge of all things!"