“Ah!” said he, “that blessed book! I have lived in this place through a dark time, and I am sure I can say that it has been ‘a light to my feet, and a lamp to my path.’” Just then a sad fit of coughing came on, which seemed almost to deprive him of the power of breathing. When it was over, I said, “Do you often cough like that?” “I often do in the night,” he replied. “I can never quite lie down; for if the cough were to come on suddenly, I might be choked before I could be got up. The doctor says I shall go off in one of these fits some night.” I asked the wife if any one was with them at night: she said, “Oh, no, John isn’t never afraid.” “The last thing that I and my old ’ooman does at night,” added John, “is to kneel down and commend ourselves to God’s keeping. I said to her last night, after we had been praying, ‘Jane, if I am sent for to-night, I am ready;’ and what it will be to leave this poor place, and go right off at once to the mansion my Saviour has provided for me!” “Can you feel as trustful as your husband?” I asked Jane. “Why, ma’am, I do try to, and I am as happy to think about heaven as he is; but you see, ma’am, the thing I feel is, that we must die first before we can go there, and death may be an awfuller thing than we think for.” “Jane,” cried her husband, in a reproving tone of voice, “how often I have told you, that if death is to be a great trouble, then God is going to send us great help for it. He took care of me and helped me when I was a strong man, and now that I am as feeble as a child, He will be strength to me; and, Jane, I wish you would mind, that it isn’t any more hard to God to help us out of great troubles than out of little uns. You wouldn’t believe, ma’am,” he continued, “how happy I am at night, sometimes, when I am lying awake. He makes me to feel that love and trust in Him, that as sure as David I can say, ‘I fear no evil.’” Blessed old man! The little room, with its close atmosphere, and many discomforts, seemed to me like the gate of heaven; and had he lived in Old Testament days, his name might have ranked with them of whom it is said, “These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off, and were persuaded of them, and embraced them, and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth.”