Uncle Joey drew back, still laughing. "Can you hear?" he shouted. "Did ye see that, Brother James, as I done your vife in? You as brought me to the gallows! You as peached, and got me hanged. And do you think as 'ow you're going to get back into this yere body what I've stole? No! Damn you! No!"
He drove the knife straight at his own breast, the breast of the stolen body, struck bone, and lunged again between the ribs.
The rigor of death clutching the hand to the hilt, the body reeling towards the blow, the stained yellow eyeballs rolling up—that which had been the living earthly habitation of James Fright went crashing down.
And there was Uncle Joey, again discarnate, leering in Storm's face beside the bunk.
"'Ow's that, umpire? 'Ow's that, Mollycoddle? Hain't that a proper vengeance worth giving of one's life for? Hain't I got my own back for being hanged, and damned before my time?"
But while he spoke, the fear grew in his eyes, the dawning sense of a most awful doom, for the dense astral matter which encrusted his spiritual body was crumbling to dust.
Storm watched, appalled, for now the man stood naked, black as coal, but with a dull red glow of rage, of hate, demoniac, horrible, doomed to perdition in the act of murder. But rage changed to terror, for he was falling, falling down through space, lost in the bottomless abyss upon whose overhanging, rocky verge Storm knelt, forgetting his own peril in an agony of prayer for a fellow creature drawn shrieking down to Hell.
"Mother!" he screamed—"help!"
Across the illimitable deeps of space Storm saw a white light like a little star, grow nearer, brighter, human in form, gigantic in stature, shining like the sun, filling the whole night with radiance, blinding. He covered his face in awe in terrified reverence.
Beaten to earth by the tremendous rays, his eyes burned by the splendor, he dared to look at the Angel, and saw his mother at rest in the strong arms, sheltered against the breast.