A low roll of thunder was heard from clouds which the storm had left. Gottreich continued to read:—
“Remember, in the last hour, how the heart of man can love. Canst thou forget the love wherewith one heart repays a thousand hearts, and the soul during a whole life is nourished and vivified from another soul? Even as the oak of a hundred years clings fast to the same spot, with its roots, and derives new strength, and sends forth new buds during its hundred springs?”
“Dost thou mean me?” said the father.
“I mean my mother also,” replied the son.
The father, thinking on his wife, murmured very gently, “To meet again. To meet again.” And Justa wept while she heard how her lover would console himself in his last hours with the reminiscence of the days of her love.
Gottreich continued to read: “Remember, in the last hour, that pure being with whom thy life was beautiful and great; with whom thou hast wept tears of joy; with whom thou hast prayed to God, and in whom God appeared unto thee; in whom thou didst find the first and last heart of love;—and then close thine eyes in peace!”
Suddenly, the clouds were cleft into two huge black mountains; and the sun looked forth from between them, as it were, out of a valley between buttresses of rock, gazing upon the earth with its joy-glistening eye.
“See!” said the dying man. “What a glow!”
“It is the evening sun, father.”
“This day we shall see one another again,” murmured the old man. He was thinking of his wife, long since dead.