Trembling with eagerness and excitement, Hampson listened to these extraordinary words.
Ever since the black hour when he had been rescued from the consequences of his sudden madness, the journalist had known that there was something very wonderful about his friend. Hampson could not in justice to himself blame himself for his attempt at suicide. He knew that he had not been responsible for what he did. The long privations of his life, the sudden accident to Joseph in the Whitechapel Road, had been too much for a sensitive and highly-strung nature. Gradually but surely reason had been temporarily undermined, and Hampson had only a very slight remembrance of the events in the fortnight which had preceded his attempt. It was in the hospital, after the careful nursing and the generous food, that his brain was restored to its balance. And it was in the hospital also that Mary Lys had told him of the strange and supernatural occurrence that had saved his life.
"Nurse," he had said to her, "I know nothing of what you tell me. I was mad—quite unconscious of what I did. But I have always known that there was something about my dear friend that tells me that he is not as other men are. He is a man set apart, though for what end I do not know, and cannot foresee. But one thing I plainly know and recognize—the Almighty Father chose Joseph to be the medium by which I was saved. God moves in a mysterious way, but he has destined my friend for wonderful things."
Mary Lys had agreed with her patient.
"I also have a prescience," she had said, "that Joseph has a work to do for God. He does not know it. He cannot realize it. He has made no submission to the Divine Will, but nevertheless he will be an instrument of It. I know with a strange certainty that this is his high destiny."
The rapid and vivid remembrance of all this went through Hampson's brain as a bullet goes through a board, when he heard Joseph's last words.
He caught him by the hand, holding the long, wasted fingers in his own, chafing them to bring back some living warmth into their icy coldness.
The strange voice ceased finally, and Joseph closed his eyes. The rigid tension of his face relaxed and a little color came back into it.
Then he gave a long sigh, shuddered and once more opened his eyes.
"I feel unwell," he said, in faint and hesitating tones. "I saw our dear, kind nurse in a carriage with another lady. We were all stopped by a block in the traffic, weren't we? I saw Nurse Mary, and then I can remember nothing more. I have been in a faint. I did not know I was still so weak."