"I fear he will not awake again," said Samuel, the physician. "The breathing is heavy, and grows shorter. His secret is his and God's." "So let it be!" said Dion. "I don't know how it can concern me. I do not care to know any mystery that may have been over my past life, since now I have come into a clearer light. I could well wish that all the past were forgotten, and that life could begin to-day." "So it may, friend Dion," replied the physician. "If God can forget anything, will not that make it as if it had never been? Read our Scriptures. How often the Lord says, 'I will not remember.' Where go the clouds when the north wind blows upon them? But saith the Lord, 'I will blot out as a thick cloud thy transgression.'" "It is a good word," said Dion. "I would trust it. But see, our pilgrim stirs." A slight tremor ran through the old man's frame. "This is death!" whispered Samuel. The physician's look, which had hitherto denoted only anxiety for his patient's recovery, quickly changed. It was now not less eager, but one merely of curiosity. He held the patient's wrists, and brought his face close for a study of death. Though Samuel knew that the flight of a soul cannot be followed, he gazed intently as if to detect its direction in starting, or at least to note which fibres of flesh longest retained their grasp of a departing spirit. But he was baffled. The sleeper suddenly threw his arms above his head, hard knit his hands, then drew in a deep breath and expelled it with a groan. "No! He lives! The sleep has only refreshed him!" cried Samuel. "Has Gideon ben Sirach rested well?" he asked, bending over him. The man gazed stupidly at the physician, then with a yawn fell asleep again. "Well, let him rest, and when he wakes we will have his story, if it takes some of the medicine from Gorgias' flask to start it." "Doubtless," said Dion, "his story will prove only a dream that has oozed out from some crack in his brain. We shall need one of your Josephs or Daniels to interpret it." "If it is so obscure as that we will summon Meph," replied the physician. "That boy seems able to solve riddles with a punch of his crutch." XLII A CLOSE CALL FOR DION "If the Lord give me strength to end it," said Gideon ben Sirach the day following, as he sat up on the edge of the couch, and rested his hands on the top of his staff. "If the Lord give me strength, I will tell the tale--if such you may call it--which has never yet passed my lips." His black eyes, far sunken beneath his long and bristling brows, gleamed sharply with the effort to penetrate their partial blindness, and scan the faces of his auditors.