EXPLAINS MY TITLE 13 CHAPTER II. DEALS WITH DEATH AND THE DREAD OF IT 19 CHAPTER III. DEALS WITH LIFE AND THE LUST OF IT, BUT HAS NO DIRECT BEARING ON MY STORY 26 CHAPTER IV. I DIE 46 CHAPTER V. IS OF AN EXPLANATORY NATURE ONLY 58 CHAPTER VI. TELLS OF MY FIRST AWFUL AWAKENING IN HELL, AND OF THE SHAMEFUL SIN WHICH BROUGHT ME THITHER 67 CHAPTER VII. SHOWS THE FITNESS OF MY PUNISHMENT 87 CHAPTER VIII. I MAKE AN UNEXPECTED DISCOVERY IN HELL, AND MEET WITH AN OLD ACQUAINTANCE 94 CHAPTER IX. I SEE SOME STRANGE SIGHTS IN HELL, AND AM FAVOURED WITH SOMETHING IN THE NATURE OF A SERMON 113 CHAPTER X. A LOVE-STORY IN HELL 128 CHAPTER XI. THE MYSTERY OF "THE DEAD WHO DIE" 148 CHAPTER XII. I SEE THE BROTHER WHOM WE HAVE ALL LOST 167 CHAPTER XIII. A DREAM OF ETERNAL REST 180 CHAPTER XIV. HOPE 206 CHAPTER XV. HEAVEN 213 [Illustration] CHAPTER I. _EXPLAINS MY TITLE._ It has always been a favourite fancy of mine that I should like to die upon some sunny, songful morning, in spring or early summer. The thought of dying in the night, and of finding this thin and aërial something, which I have learned to call "my soul," being driven remorselessly nightward, as Adam and Eve were driven from Paradise; the seeing it in imagination, a spectral, unsubstantial shadow of myself, flitting a-shivering out into the black-wombed darkness, and fumbling with filmy hands that it might clasp the closer around it the warm familiar robe of flesh, only to find that robe fallen away for ever--this thought, I must confess, fills me at all times with an abhorrent loathing and dread. To look up by night at the cold glitter of the stars, and to fancy my disembodied spirit winging its weary way thereto, through fathomless leagues of void and voiceless ether, causes me ever to shiver, and to turn shudderingly to earth again; but the thought of passing peacefully away upon some sunny, summer morning seems less like dying than like stepping out of doors to be among the birds and the butterflies. _Then_ the heaven of my hopes would not seem so very distant after all (and oh! how much more heavenly and homelike would that heaven appear did I but know it to be _this_ side of the stars!), and my first entry into the dim and shadowy realm of the spirit-world would seem the less strange and unfamiliar for my having to pass out on my way to it through the fields, the flowers, and the sunshine that I love so well.