"I have never thought of God," he continued to reiterate. "I have never cared for Him, or tried to please Him, or done the least thing for Him. And now I'm going to face His wrath, and I can't help myself!"
"You may be spared yet," said William; "you may indeed. And your future life must atone for the past."
"I shan't be spared, sir; I feel that the world's all up with me," was the rejoinder. "I'm going fast, and there's nobody to give me a word of comfort! Can't you, sir? I'm going away, and God's angry with me!"
William leaned over him. "I can only say as Charlotte East did," he whispered. "Try and find your Saviour. There is mercy with Him at the eleventh hour."
"I have not the time to find Him," breathed forth Tyrrett, in agony. "I might find Him if I had time given me; but I have not got it."
William, shrinking in his youth and inexperience from arguing upon topics so momentous, was not equal to the emergency. Who was? He did what he could; and that was to despatch a message for a clergyman, who answered the summons with speed.
The blister also came, and the medicine that had been prescribed. William went home, hoping all might prove as a healing balm to the sick man.
A fallacious hope. Tyrrett died the following morning. When William went round early on his mission of inquiry, he found him dead. Some of the men, whom he had seen with Tyrrett the previous night, were assembled in the kitchen.
"He is but just gone, sir," they said, "The women be up with him now. They have took his wife round screeching to her mother's. He died with that there blister on his chest."
"Did he die peacefully?" was William's question.