"'How are you, Philip? you look ill. Suppose you have got into some trouble, or we should not be honoured by a visit?'
"'You are right, in part, grandmother. I have been sick for some days, and have come home for change of air and good nursing.'
"I put a handful of gold in her lap. 'You see I am willing and able to pay for the trouble I give. When this is gone, you can have more.'
"'Money is always welcome—more welcome often than those that bring it. All things considered, however, I am glad to see you. When relatives are too long separated, they become strangers to each other. Alice and I had concluded that you only regarded us as such. The sight of you will renew the old tie of kindred, and make you one of us again. Quick, Alice, get your brother some supper; he must be hungry after his long journey.'
"'I am in no need; Alice, do not trouble yourself; I feel too ill to eat; I will go to bed if you please. All I want at present is rest.'
"Dinah, who was passing the gold from one hand to the other, and gazing upon it with infinite satisfaction, suddenly looked up and repeated the last word after me, with peculiar emphasis.
"'Rest! Who rests in this world? Even sleep is not rest; the body sleeps, but the soul toils on, on, on, for ever. There is no such thing as rest. If I thought so, I would put an end to my existence to-morrow—I would; and meet death as a liberator from the vexatious turmoils of life.'
"There was something in these words which filled my mind with an indescribable horror—a perfect dread of endless duration. I had always looked upon the grave as a place of rest—a haven of peace from the cares of life. That old raven, with her dismal croaking, had banished the pleasing illusion, and made me nervously sensitive to the terrors of a living, conscious eternity. Whilst undressing to go to bed, I was seized with violent shivering fits, and before morning was delirious, and in a high fever.
"I had never suffered from severe illness before; I had often been afflicted in mind, but not in body. I now had to endure the horrors of both combined. For the first fortnight I was too ill to think. I was in the condition of the unfortunate patriarch, who in the morning exclaimed, 'Would God it were night!' and when night came, reversed the feverish hope.
"There were moments, however, during the burning hours of these sleepless nights, when the crimes of the past, and the uncertainty of the future, rushed before me in terrible distinctness; when I tried to pray and could not, and sought comfort from the Word of God, and found every line a condemnation. Oh, those dreadful days and nights, when I lay a hopeless, self-condemned expectant of misery, shuddering on the awful brink of eternity, shrieking to the Almighty Father for peace, and finding none; seeking for rest with strong cries and tears, and being repaid with ten-fold agony. May I never again suffer in flesh and spirit what I then endured!