The crisis came before its time. Carlton grew too weak to hold the poker or to lift a coal, but cruelly clear in his mind. Thus far he had never prayed. He had abandoned prayer with all deliberation and in all his vigour. It needed more than the fear of death to make him pray again, least of all for mere life. Now that the fire was going out, and recovery no longer possible, the case was changed; and this erring servant broke his long silence with God, to pray both for forgiveness and for a speedy issue out of his afflictions. And in the same hour came the seeming answer, as if to assure him that even his prayers had still some value in the eyes of the Most High. For delirium had dwindled into coma, with these few lucid minutes between, and the fever and the pain had passed away. Yet it was in this world that Robert Carlton awoke yet again, to find his precious fire alight after all, and a dilapidated figure nodding over it to the song of a fresh kettle. It was old Busby, the sexton. The sick man could not speak; his little finger seemed to weigh a stone; it was some minutes before he achieved movement enough to attract the sexton's attention. But all this time the live coals had been warming his soul. And already he lay convinced that he also was going to live. The sexton turned his face at last. It was a startling face for sick eyes at such a range. The toothless mouth, which never closed, had often reminded Mr. Carlton of one of his own gargoyles. It did so now. And a continual trickle of saliva added a disgusting realism to the image, which was, however, immediately dispelled by a human grin of profound slyness. "And have you been bad?" inquired the sexton. "Beat--up--an egg. I--can't--speak." Evidently he could not, for Busby was bending a horrid ear. "Eh? eh?" Carlton made a fresh effort with shut eyes. "No food . . . faint for want . . . there no eggs?" "Eggs? Why, yes, here's one." "Beat up for me . . . too bad to speak." The sexton looked more sententious than ever. "Ah, I thought as how you'd been bad," said he, with all the nods of the successful seer. "I thought as how you'd been bad!" "It's only been a cold," whispered Carlton, in sudden terror of the public pity. "Only a cold?" "Oh, yes--that's all." "Then you've not been as bad as me!" cried Busby, triumphantly. "Do you mind what I had inside me last year? That's there still! I can hear that----" "Will you do what I ask?" It was a peremptory whisper now. "I would, sir, but I don't fare to know the road." "Then give me the egg, for heaven's sake, and you hold the cup." Carlton managed to rise a few inches in his impatience; but his fingers had less power than those of the babe new-born, and the egg slipped through them. With fortuitous dexterity, the sexton caught it in the cup; there was a crack; and accident had accomplished the design.