He chuckled at the memory.
"Paul reproved Luke for what he had done. Paul was a big man, also, but he was short, and his bigness lay in his breadth. He had no hair, and he stood under Luke nodding so that the sun flashed back and forth on his bald head. He told Luke that I might have been killed.
"'Better teach him sober manners now,' said Luke, 'than be a jester to knock at the gate of God.'
"This Paul was wonderfully silent. He was born unhappy and nothing could make him smile. He used to wander through the valley alone in the middle of winter, half dead with cold and eating nothing. In those times, even Luke was not strong enough to make him come home to us.
"I know that for ten days at one time he had gone without speech. For that reason he loved to have Joseph with him, because Joseph understood signs.
"But when silence left him, Paul was great in speech. Luke spoke in a loud voice and Matthew beautifully, but Paul was terrible. He would fall on his knees in an agony and pray to God for salvation for us and for himself. While he kneeled he seemed to grow in size. He filled the room. And his words were like whips. They made me think of all my sins. That is how I remember Paul, kneeling, with his long arms thrown over his head.
"Matthew died in the evening just as the moon rose. He was sitting beside me. He put his hand in mine. After a while I felt that the hand was cold, and when I looked at Matthew his head had fallen.
"Paul died in a drift of snow. We always knew that he had been on his knees praying when the storms struck him and he would not rise until he had finished the prayer.
"Luke bowed his head one day at the table and died without a sound—in spite of all his strength.
"All these men have not really died out of the valley. They are here, like mists; they are faces of thin air. Sometimes when I sit alone at my table, I can almost see a spirit-hand like that of Matthew rise with a shadow-glass of wine.