"I'm journeying away, Rachel,—up yonder. Mary is there. Can't 'ee see her, Rachel? What is the veil between 'ee?—I can see 'ee both. Look! There is New Jerusalem. The King in His Glory. Her words. Come—"
She fell back. I caught her in my arms. My soul could not follow.
CHAPTER XLIII: ONE LONG PRERCESSION O' DEATHBEDS
About this time, indeed, persons in the play of Mary Lee were dying Hamletwise. One after another, swiftly, bodies were being trundled off the stage.
Aunt Jael's leadership of the Seven Old Maids of Tawborough was maintained in death. It was edifying to note that just as sixty years ago they had briskly emulated her Conversion, now with equal alacrity they followed her to her Home above.
Within three months Miss Glory Clinker departed. One February morning she went away; wide-eyed, stuttering, triumphant. I heard her last words. "The night is far spent, the day is at hand—er-er-er." Her eyes lit up; a beatific happiness brightened the kind foolish old face. "Er-er-er—." She was stammering before the Throne.
Of the Seven, Salvation alone survived for long: till her one hundred and fourth year, a few years only before the time at which I write, almost into the new century that is at hand. Her last words were incoherent. I could not catch them, though I tried to.
Pentecost Dodderidge outlived his most famous convert by seven months only. He was in his one hundredth year. A stroke of paralysis came suddenly, followed by a restless ten days, in which he suffered intense pain and displayed eternal patience, and which he filled with edifying epigrams and godly saws and instances, all reverently collected by the faithful ones around his bed and embodied in his Choice Sayings. (The volume is before me as I write.) As the last saved soul to whom he had stood Baptist, and as the grand-niece and grandchild of "those two eminent bright jewels in our Saviour's crown," I was specially in request at the old man's bedside. His last words, spoken clearly and solemnly, with all the actor-like sincerity of his greatest days, were these, each utterance coming a clear moment or two after the other: