"Shall we start?" asked the Figure.
"I am ready," answered Rick.
And they passed out together into the deep black night.
"Come, take my arm: we will call together for your brother."
"He has so much to make him happy! There are the little ones and his wife! Could you not delay a little?"
"He must come with us to-night."
Dick was attending a banquet which was being given in his honour to celebrate his recent election as a Common Councilman, and the lust of life was in his every vein. But in the act of responding to the toast of the evening he was suddenly attacked by a fit of apoplexy. He staggered, and fell back—and they perceived that he was dead.
It was a bleak and a very depressing journey to pass nakedly and alone from the warm, well-lighted, and flattering banquet, and, most of all, from the comfortable and familiar earth, up to the Doom's-man and the Bar beside the Gates. If he could only have had a friend or two at his side!
On the way up, just as he was nearing the gates, Dick overtook Rick, who was a little way ahead of him.