“To tell the truth, it seems to me so magnificent, so far beyond my right to claim, that sometimes it appears more like a vision than a certainty. Does it not sound almost incredible to you, that I, who this night am in a cold, dark, and dismal prison, shall be, before another sun has set, listening to the harping of angelic lyres, walking in the procession of white-robed Saints, inhaling the perfume of celestial incense, and drinking from the crystal waters of the stream of life? Is it not too like what one may read or hear about another, but hardly dares to think is to be, in a few hours, real of himself?” “And nothing more than you have described, Pancratius?” “Oh, yes, far more; far more than one can name without presumption. That I, a boy just come out of school, who have done nothing for Christ as yet, should be able to say, ‘Sometime to-morrow, I shall see Him face to face, and adore Him, and shall receive from Him a palm and a crown, yea, and an affectionate embrace,’--I feel is so like a beautiful hope, that it startles me to think it will soon be _that_ no longer. And yet, Sebastian,” he continued fervently, seizing both his friend’s hands, “it is true; it is true!” “And more still, Pancratius.” “Yes, Sebastian, more still, and more. To close one’s eyes upon the faces of men, and open them in full gaze on the face of God; to shut them upon ten thousand countenances scowling on you with hatred, contempt, and fury, from every step of the amphitheatre, and unclose them instantly upon that one sunlike intelligence, whose splendor would dazzle or scorch, did not its beams surround, and embrace, and welcome us; to dart them at once into the furnace of God’s heart, and plunge into its burning ocean of mercy and love without fear of destruction: surely, Sebastian, it sounds like presumption in me to say, that to-morrow--nay, hush! the watchman from the capitol is proclaiming midnight--that to-day, to-day, I shall enjoy all this!” “Happy Pancratius!” exclaimed the soldier, “you anticipate already by some hours the raptures to come.” “And do you know, dear Sebastian,” continued the youth, as if unconscious of the interruption, “it looks to me so good and merciful in God, to grant me such a death. How much more willingly must one at my age face it, when it puts an end to all that is hateful on earth, when it extinguishes but the sight of hideous beasts and sinning men, scarcely less frightful than they, and hushes only the fiend-like yells of both! How much more trying would it be to part with the last tender look of a mother like mine, and shut one’s ears to the sweet plaint of her patient voice! True, I shall see her and hear her, for the last time, as we have arranged, to-day before my fight: but I know she will not unnerve me.” A tear had made its way into the affectionate boy’s eye; but he suppressed it, and said with a gay tone: