Though broken, his sleep was long. The sun went down, the night passed, and still he slept.
"I fear he will not awake again," said Samuel, the physician. "The breathing is heavy, and grows shorter. His secret is his and God's."
"So let it be!" said Dion. "I don't know how it can concern me. I do not care to know any mystery that may have been over my past life, since now I have come into a clearer light. I could well wish that all the past were forgotten, and that life could begin to-day."
"So it may, friend Dion," replied the physician. "If God can forget anything, will not that make it as if it had never been? Read our Scriptures. How often the Lord says, 'I will not remember.' Where go the clouds when the north wind blows upon them? But saith the Lord, 'I will blot out as a thick cloud thy transgression.'"
"It is a good word," said Dion. "I would trust it. But see, our pilgrim stirs."
A slight tremor ran through the old man's frame.
"This is death!" whispered Samuel.
The physician's look, which had hitherto denoted only anxiety for his patient's recovery, quickly changed. It was now not less eager, but one merely of curiosity. He held the patient's wrists, and brought his face close for a study of death.
Though Samuel knew that the flight of a soul cannot be followed, he gazed intently as if to detect its direction in starting, or at least to note which fibres of flesh longest retained their grasp of a departing spirit.