He felt sure that, before he had exhausted his strength or his tapers, he should come to some outlet. But by degrees he began to feel serious alarm. One after the other his lights were burnt out, and his vigor began to fail, for he had been fasting from early morning; and he found himself coming back to the same spot, after he had wandered about apparently for hours. At first he had looked negligently around him, and had carelessly read the inscriptions on the tombs. But as he grew fainter, and his hope of relief weaker, these solemn monuments of death began to speak to his soul, in a language that it could not refuse to hear, nor pretend to misunderstand. “Deposited in peace,” was the inmate of one; “resting in Christ” was another; and even the thousand nameless ones around them reposed in silent calm, each with the seal of the Church’s motherly care stamped upon his place of rest. And within, the embalmed remains awaited the sound of angelic trumpet-notes, to awaken them to a happy resurrection. And he, in a few more hours, would be dead like them; he was lighting his last taper, and had sunk down upon a heap of mould; but would he be laid in peace, by pious hands, as they? On the cold ground, alone, he should die, unpitied, unmourned, unknown. There he should rot, and drop to pieces; and if, in after years, his bones, cast out from Christian sepulture, should be found, tradition might conjecture that they were the accursed remains of an apostate lost in the cemetery. And even they might be cast out, as he was, from the communion of that hallowed ground. It was coming on fast; he could feel it; his head reeled, his heart fluttered. The taper was getting too short for his fingers, and he placed it on a stone beside him. It might burn three minutes longer; but a drop filtering through the ceiling, fell upon it, and extinguished it. So covetous did he feel of those three minutes more of light, so jealous was he of that little taper-end, as his last link with earth’s joys, so anxious was he to have one more look at things without, lest he should be forced to look at those within, that he drew forth his flint and steel, and labored for a quarter of an hour to get a light from tinder, damped by the cold perspiration on his body. And when he had lighted his remnant of candle, instead of profiting by its flame to look around him, he fixed his eyes upon it with an idiotic stare, watching it burn down, as though it were the charm which bound his life, and this must expire with it. And soon the last spark gleamed smouldering like a glow-worm, on the red earth, and died.