"Ah, I see how it is, I see how it is," cried the unhappy man; "I am dying, and they have kept it from me till they had got all that they sought;" and, like the stricken king of Israel, he turned his face to the wall, while one or two hot and bitter drops scorched his eyelids, and trickled over his cheeks. After a long silence, however, he again turned towards the woman, saying, "He is very long; I wish to God he would come! I have a great deal that lies heavy at my heart; and I would fain hear some words of comfort before I die. You do not think he will be frightened away by what that rascally lord has said?"
"Ah! no, sir; no fear!" answered the nurse; "Dr. Edwards is not a man to be frightened away by any body or any thing, so long as he thinks he's doing his duty. He is not one of that sort, sir. Why, last year, when the terrible catching fever was raging down in the village, and every one that took it died, he was night and day at the bedsides of the poor people that had it, although the doctor told him a thousand times that he was risking his own precious life: but he saw that it gave them more comfort than any thing to see him; and so he went at all hours, and into all places."
"I wish he would come," groaned the dying man; "I wish he would come."
Almost as he spoke, there was a cautious step in the anteroom, and the lock of the door turned under the quiet noiseless hand of one evidently accustomed to the chambers of the sick. The next moment the clergyman entered, and advanced closely towards the bed, although his heated brow and quick breathing showed that he had lost no time in obeying the summons he had received. He was a man between sixty and seventy, with scanty white hair covering thinly a high broad forehead, across which the cares and sorrows of others, more than his own, had traced two or three deep furrows. His countenance was grave, but mild; and his eyes full of both the light of feeling and the light of sense.
The nurse rose up from the chair in which she had been sitting at the pillow of the dying man, and Dr. Edwards quietly took her place, without appearing to see that Sir Roger Millington was eying him from head to foot; and, notwithstanding his situation, was comparing the person before him with the prejudiced image of a parson, which habits of vice had alone enabled his imagination to draw.
"I am much obliged to you for admitting me, my dear sir," said the rector, in a kindly tone. "How do you feel yourself? Are you in less pain than when I last saw you?"
"Yes, I am in less pain, sir," answered the other; "but I rather believe that is no good sign. At least they told me, when I was in torture, that pain was a good omen for my recovery; and now I am in no pain at all, I suppose it is a bad one."
"I am not sure that it is a good one," answered the clergyman gravely; "but at all events it has this good with it, that it leaves your mind and faculties perfectly free to consider fully your situation, and to take whatever measures, temporal or spiritual, may be necessary for your comfort and consolation."
"Ay, that is what I want to come to, Dr. Edwards," answered Sir Roger, "and I am glad you have come to it at once. But first tell me--and I adjure you by Heaven to tell me true, for these people deceive me--am I dying, or am I not?"
"I would have answered you truly without any adjuration," answered the clergyman. "None can, sir, or ought to say to another that it is impossible he can recover; for God can and does show us every day the fallacy of our judgment in the things that we best comprehend: but I do believe that you are in such a situation that it were wise to prepare yourself for another world without loss of time."