So they raised him up, and, between his short breathing and coughing, he told the story. He had to use the language he knew.
"Boys," he said, "you know how the water runs down the sluice-boxes and carries off the dirt and leaves the gold behind. Well, the blood of that Man she tells about went right over me just like that. It carried off about everything; but it left enough for me to see Mamie, and to see the Man that died for me. O boys, can't you love him?"
Some days after, there came a look into his face which told that the end had come. I had to leave him, and I said, "What shall I say tonight, Jack?"
"Just good night," he said.
"What will you say to me when we meet again?"
"I'll say, 'Good morning,' over there."
The next morning the door was closed, and I found two men sitting silently by a board stretched across two stools. They turned back the sheet from the dead, and I looked on the face, which seemed to have come back nearer to the image of God.
"I wish you could have seen him when he went," they said.
"Tell me about it."
"Well, all at once he brightened up, 'bout midnight, an' smilin', said: 'I'm goin', boys. Tell her I'm going to see the Man that died for me;' an' he was gone."