For several days Daniel suffered great pain, but with such perfect peace and joy in his heart that it seemed as if he could scarcely realize or feel his bodily anguish. Jessica was with him constantly; and when he was free from pain she read aloud to him, or talked with him of the heaven to which he was going, and which seemed to be open to his gaze already, as one catches a glimpse from afar off of some beautiful country basking in the glory of a full noontide sunshine.
The chapel people came to see him, some of them in the carriages which of old set him pondering on their riches; and they left him, marveling that they had known so little of the religiousness of the man who had ushered them to their pews Sunday after Sunday. But as yet the minister had not visited him, though he had sent him word that as soon as it was possible he would come to see him.
The last day had arrived; both Daniel and Jessica knew that it was the last day, and she had not stirred from his side since morning; and still the minister had not come—had not been able to come to the death-bed of his old friend. For they were old friends, having met many times a week for a dozen years in the same chapel; and since Jessica had drawn them closer together the learned and eloquent preacher had cared for Daniel’s illiterate soul, and the chapel-keeper had learned to pick up some crumbs of nourishment from the great feast which the minister prepared week after week for his intellectual congregation. He had not been, but Daniel was undisturbed, and so, patient and peaceful, with a smile upon his lips when he met Jessica’s wistful eyes, he waited for the last hour and the last moment to come.
Yet before it was too late, and before his eye grew dim, and his tongue numbed with the chillness of death, the minister arrived, pale in face, and bowed down with weakness, and with a trembling voice which faltered often as he spoke. They clasped one another’s hands, and looked into one another’s face with a strange recognition, as if both had seen further into the other world than they had ever done before, and then the minister sank feebly into the chair beside Daniel’s pillow.
“I will rest here, and stay with you for an hour,” he said.
“It is the last hour,” answered Daniel.
“Be it so,” replied the minister. “I too have looked death in the face.”
They were silent for a while, while the minister rallied his strength, and then he bent his head, his head only, for he was too feeble yet to kneel beside the dying man, and he poured forth a prayer to God in his inmost heart, but with hesitating lips, which no longer uttered with ready speech the thoughts which thronged to his brain. The Amen with which he ended was almost a groan.
“My power is taken from me,” he said; “the Almighty has stricken me in the pride of my heart. I shall never more speak as I used to do, of his glory and majesty, and the greatness of his salvation.”