"I've been a great sinner, Father," he would say. "I owe a big debt to the justice of the Almighty!"
As he had lived, so he died, I had noticed that my brother had shown no surprise, as I did, at the sight of the dying figure of the old man stretched on the bare earth with a stone for his pillow; Val had become familiar with the idea.
"My Saviour died on a Cross for me, and shall I, a vile sinner, be content to die in my bed?" Thus he would always answer the remonstrances of the priest.
Whenever I read the Gospel narrative of Lazarus—the wretchedly clothed, ill-fed, diseased mendicant—who inspired loathing in the eyes and nostrils of the delicately nurtured, sensual men who flocked past his unlovely form to the banquets of the rich glutton at whose palace gate he lay, my thoughts fly at once to my old friend, Archie the penitent, and my prayers rise to Heaven on his behalf in the Church's touching petition for the departed:
"Cum Lazaro, quondam paupere, eternam habeas requiem!"
"With Lazarus, once poor, now blest
May'st thou enjoy eternal rest!"
IV
GOLDEN DREAMS
"All the world is turning golden, turning golden
In the spring."
(Nora Hopper—"April.")
On a day when May was growing old, everything up at Ardmuirland was green and gold except the sky, and that was mostly blue and gold. Gorse and broom were in full blossom, so that on all sides the outlook was glorious!