I thought Miss Axtell would have ventured out on the bridge, far and high, ere now; but no, she says "the time is not yet,—that she will wait until Abraham comes home"; and Bernard McKey is content.
The solemn old house is closed. No longer Katie opens the door and Kino looks around the corner. Kino died, perhaps of grief: such deaths have been.
Miss Axtell has put off the old Dead-Sea-wave face. She has just put a calm, beautiful, happy one in at my door, to ask Anna Percival "why she sits and writes, when the last days of summer are drawing nigh?" Miss Axtell stays with me, and a great contentment sings to those who have ears to hear through all her life. If only Mr. Axtell would come home! Why does he stay away so long, and take such a dreary line of travel, where old earth is seamed in memoriam of man's rebellion? I'll send to him the althea-bud, when next his sister writes.
The leaves are fallen now. Winter is almost come. There is no need that I should send out the althea-fragment. Mr. Axtell wrote to me. Last night I received these words only,—and yet what need I more?
"God hath given me peace. I am coming home."
THE LEGEND OF RABBI BEN LEVI.
Rabbi Ben Levi, on the Sabbath, read
A volume of the Law, in which it said,
"No man shall look upon my face and live."
And as he read, he prayed that God would give
His faithful servant grace with mortal eye
To look upon His face and yet not die.
Then fell a sudden shadow on the page,
And lifting up his eyes, grown dim with age,
He saw the Angel of Death before him stand,
Holding a naked sword in his right hand.
Rabbi Ben Levi was a righteous man,
Yet through his veins a chill of terror ran,
With trembling voice he said, "What wilt thou here?"
The Angel answered, "Lo! the time draws near
When thou must die; yet first, by God's decree,
Whate'er thou askest shall be granted thee."
Replied the Rabbi, "Let these living eyes
First look upon my place in Paradise."
Then said the Angel, "Come with me and look."
Rabbi Ben Levi closed the sacred book,
And rising, and uplifting his gray head,
"Give me thy sword," he to the Angel said,
"Lest thou shouldst fall upon me by the way."
The Angel smiled and hastened to obey,
Then led him forth to the Celestial Town,
And set him on the wall, whence gazing down,
Rabbi Ben Levi, with his living eyes,
Might look upon his place in Paradise.
Then straight into the city of the Lord
The Rabbi leaped with the Death Angel's sword,
And through the streets there swept a sudden breath
Of something there unknown, which men call death.
Meanwhile the Angel stayed without, and cried,
"Come back!" To which the Rabbi's voice replied,
"No! in the name of God, whom I adore,
I swear that hence I will depart no more!"