"Let me die the death of the righteous," he murmured thickly. "That's it--that's--that's--" He wrote on the paper before him with a wandering pen, then pushed the sheet from him. It fell on the floor by the window. "And let my last end be like his--Ah--ah!" He drank again, and again wrote with fury. How old and how wicked he looked, yet how sad! He crouched down over the table and the pen broke in his hand. A dull exclamation burst from him. Taking up the bottle, he poured by accident some of the whiskey over the open Bible. "A baptism! A baptism!" he ejaculated, bursting into laughter. "Now--now--let's see--let's see." Again he violently turned the sodden leaves and shook his head. He could not read the words, and that angered him. He drank again and again till the bottle was empty, then staggered out of the room. I heard his frantic footsteps echoing in the uncarpeted passage. Quickly I leaned in at the window and caught up the sheet of paper that had fallen to the floor. I held it up to the light. Only one sentence writhed up and down over it, repeated a dozen times; "There is no God!" While I read I heard the doctor returning, and I shrank back into the night. He came stumbling in, another whiskey bottle full in his hand. Falling down in the chair he applied his lips to it and drank--on and on. He was killing himself there and then. I knew it. I wanted to leap into the room, to stop him, yet I only watched him. Why?--I want to know why-- At last he fell forward across the Bible with a choking noise. His limbs struggled. His arms shot out wildly, the table broke under him--there was a crash of glass. The lamp was extinguished. Darkness crowded the little room--and silence. * * * * * The papers recorded the shocking death of a minister. They did not record this.