Then the fight in his own soul went on again. The preacher's face looked grey in the darkness—the darkness was dark enough.
Was it all a mistake? The waters were going over him.
"I wish you'd light a match. There's one hidden under the rug," said Jack; "and put it between your teeth and lift me a bit; I want to see you."
"That 'ull do ye no good," said Barnabas; but he did as he was asked. The match flickered up between the dying man's face and his own; the loneliness that pressed on his soul, as the thick darkness on his eyeballs, seemed momentarily lightened; then the flame went out.
"Thank 'ee—that will do," said Jack. "It makes a man feel queer to know he's going out, and lonesome like."
"Are you in much pain?" asked Barnabas; he had grown fond of Hopping Jack.
"No; it's the first time it's held off me for weeks," he said. "I say, preacher—I ain't going to whine about my sins, they're past praying for; but I wish I hadn't gone in for that work in the yard when we set on you. When one's always got a kind of grinding pain going on inside one, it kind of drives one to play the fool badly. Dr. Merrill says it's something with a queer name that begins with a 'K' was the matter with me, and it sarved me right. I wish he'd got it! Preaching always riled me, and that day it was bad, and you looked so strong. It were partly that that aggravated me."
"I see. I was very strong," said the preacher, a good deal touched by this odd confession. "Happen it made ye envious. Never mind, Jack, that's past."
"No, it ain't," said Jack. "You're a different sort to me, and don't bear malice; but it's made you another man. It hurt you to lift me with two hands just now; you could have lifted me with one finger before we did that. If the Lord you're so sure about is there, He oughtn't to forget; but without that (for it ain't any good thinking of what's coming), I wish I hadn't had a hand in it."
He paused for breath, looking up wistfully at the preacher, whose face he could no longer make out, and finding it difficult to express penitence without showing the white feather. "Mind you, it ain't nothing to do with heaven or hell," he said confusedly. "I'm only sorry 'cos it was you."