‘And so am I anxious about you, mother, but I don’t worry you nor myself. What’s the use? Here we are, rank and file, like soldiers, and the shells are exploding round us on every side. We may get hit, or we may not. There are survivors after all great battles. Think of those old fellows we have seen who were all through the Peninsular war. How many times must they and death have been within an inch of each other! We are no worse off than they were.’ The tolling of the funeral bell came like a full stop at the end of Emmanuel’s speech. One of Mrs. Joyce’s ideas for the preservation of her son’s health--of herself she thought no more than if she had been invulnerable--was to get him as much as possible out of the tainted neighbourhood he lived in. She urged him to abandon his evening studies, and to take long walks into the country, she going with him. The young man humoured this fancy as he would have humoured any wish of his mother’s, and the two used to set out after working hours on a rural tramp. The country, or anything pretty in the way of rustic scenery, was not easily reached from Bridford. Long dusty high roads, bounded by uninteresting fields of mangel, or turnips, had to be traversed before the weary pedestrian arrived at anything rural or refreshing to the senses. Emmanuel and his mother had both a keen love of the beautiful, and they overwalked themselves nightly in the endeavour to reach some green hill-side or wooded dell they knew of. The evenings were sultry and oppressive. More than once the wayfarers were caught in a thunder-shower, and went home wet to the skin. Altogether this precautionary measure of Mrs. Joyce’s was about the worst thing she and her son could have done. The end was fatal. One night Emmanuel was seized with racking pain, and the usual symptoms of Asiatic cholera. The parish doctor came early in the morning. Yes, there was no room for doubt, it was another case. The widow heard his opinion with a stony calmness. All her fussy anxiety seemed gone. Her pale set face betokened a despair too deep for words. She sat by her son’s pillow. She wiped the drops of agony from his drawn face. She obeyed to the letter every direction the doctor had given her. ‘How good you are!’ she said once, when she had seen the struggle between fortitude and pain, ‘how patient! Oh, my dear one, surely this is Christian patience. I know it. I feel it. At heart you are a Christian.’ ‘I have tried to live an honest life,’ the sick man answered, feebly. ‘I have tried to keep my name fair in the sight of men--and to do as much good as I was able to my neighbours.’ ‘That is Christianity, my dear. If you would but acknowledge----But no, I won’t talk to you now. God will have mercy. He will spare you--for me--for me. And then your heart will be melted and you will turn to Him.’ ‘Mother, if I should be taken away,’ Emmanuel said later, ‘I know Mr. Culverhouse will be good to you. You will not be friendless.’