"Who is it?"
At the next moment, raising his eyes, he thought he saw his father in the arm-chair where he had seen him so often. The august face was the same as when he saw it last in that room, except that the melancholy eyes were now open.
"I'm ill," he thought, and he closed his eyes and put his hand over them.
But when he opened his eyes again his father was still there, looking at him with tenderness and compassion. His brain reeled and he fell face down on the cushions of the sofa.
Then he heard his father speaking to him, gently, affectionately, but firmly, just as he used to do when he was alive.
"My son! My dear son! I know what you are thinking of doing, and I warn you not to do it. No man can run away from the consequences of his sins. If he flies from them in this life he must meet them in the life hereafter, and then it will be a hundred-fold more terrible to be swept from the face of the living God."
"Father!"
Stowell tried to cry aloud but could not. His father's voice ceased and at the next moment a vision flashed before him. A line of miserable-looking men were standing before an awful tribunal. He knew who they were—the unjust judges of the world who had corrupted justice. All the grandeur in which they had clothed themselves on earth was gone, and they were there in the nakedness of their shame crying,
"Mercy! Mercy! Mercy!"
Stowell felt as if he were falling off the world into a void of unfathomable night. Then blindness fell upon the eyes of his mind and he knew no more.