“Ay,” said Lauderdale, “I make no doubt of that; but no in your way. He’ll be better off when summer comes.” Meredith turned a corner close upon them as he spoke. He was riding, it is true, but only on a mule, jogging along at a funeral pace, with Alice walking by his side. He smiled when he met them; but the smile was accompanied by a momentary flush, as of shame or pain. “The last step but one,” he said. “I have given up walking for ever. I did not think I should ever have come to this; but my spirit is proud, and needs to be mortified. Campbell, come here. It is long since we have had any conversation. I thought God was dealing with your soul when I last talked to you. Tell me, if you were as far gone as I am--if you were reduced to _this_”--and the sick man laid his thin white hand upon the neck of the animal he was riding--“what consolation would you have to keep you from sinking? It may come sooner than you think.” “It is not easy to imagine how one would conduct oneself under such circumstances,” said Colin; “let us talk of something else. If it were coming--and it may be, for anything I can tell--I think I should prefer not to give it too much importance. Look at that low blaze of sunshine, how it catches St. Peter’s. These sunsets are like dramas--but nobody plans the grouping beforehand,” said the young man, with an involuntary allusion which he was sorry for the next moment, but could not recall. “That is an unkind speech,” said Meredith; “but I forgive you. If I could plan the grouping, as you say, I should like to collect all the world to see me die. Heathens, papists, Mahometans, Christians of every description--I would call them to see with what confidence a Christian could traverse the dark valley, knowing Him who can sustain, and who has preceded him there.” “Yes, that was Addison’s idea; but his was an age when people did things for effect,” said Colin: “and everything I have heard makes me believe that people generally die very composedly upon the whole. The best and wisest are scarcely superior in that respect to the ignorant and stupid--scarcely even to the wicked. Either people have an infinite confidence in themselves and their good fortune; or else absolute faith in God is a great deal more general than you think it. I should like to believe that last was the case. Pardon me for what I said. You who realize so strongly what you are going to, should certainly die, when that time comes, a glorious and joyful death.” At these words a cloud passed over the eager, hectic countenance which Meredith had turned to his friend. “Ah, you don’t know,” he said, with a sudden depression which Colin had never seen in him before. “Sometimes God sees fit to abandon His servants even in that hour; what, if after preaching to others I should myself be a castaway?” This conversation was going on while Alice talked to Lauderdale of the housekeeping, and how the man at the Trattoria had charged a scudo too much in the last weekly bill.