"Promise not to kiss him, Essie!" Brandon rejoins, very earnestly; also in a whisper, "We cannot spare you too." She takes no notice of his request, but, opening the door gently, enters the chamber, where the king of kings, and lord of lords, almighty Death--before whom we all grovelling do unwilling obeisance--is holding one of his myriad courts. It is but a small, slightly furnished room in which he is holding this one, but that concerns him but little. His majesty is so great that he can afford to dispense with the adventitious adjuncts of pomp and circumstance. Without his crown and sceptre, without his courtiers--Plague, Pestilence, and Famine--he is still very king and emperor. The window is open, but the white curtains drawn-- "While through the lattice ivy shadows creep." On the table stand physic-bottles--puny foils with which we fence with death--and an open Bible, out of which Brandon, with shaking voice, and a weak, dying hand held in his strong tender one, read the old comfortable words that have soothed many a transit, to the young traveller who was setting out meekly, and not fearfully, in the autumn morning. Over the bed spreads a white sheet, and beneath it a formless form! Can that be Jack? Can that be Jack, lying still and idle in the bright midday?--Jack, to whom the shelter of a house was ever irksome, who was up and about at cock-crow, to whom all weathers were the same, and the bracing wind blowing about the heathery hills the very breath of his nostrils? A feeling of incredulity steals over her. She walks to the bed and turns down the sheet from the face, and the incredulity deepens into incredulous awe. Oh, ye liars! all ye that say that sleep and death are alike! what kinship is there between the pliant relaxer of soft limbs, the light brief slumber, that, at any trivial noise, a trumpeting gnat or distant calling voice, flies and is dissolved, and the grave stiff whiteness of that profoundest rest that no thousand booming cannons, no rock-rending earthquake, no earth-riving thunderbolt can break? It is an insult to that strong narcotic to liken any other repose to that he gives. They have crossed the young fellow's hands upon his unheaving breast, meekly, as the hands of one that prayeth; and laid sprigs of grey-flowered rosemary in them. She looks at him steadfastly, a great, awful amazement in her dilated eyes. Is _this_ the boy that whistled "I paddle my own canoe"--whose step, glad and noisy, echoed about the stairs?--the boy that sat and smoked at the study window, with her fond head resting on his young slight shoulder?--the boy that was worried about failing crops and barren land?--the boy whose laugh had a sincerer ring in it than any one else's, who made so many jokes, and had such a light heart? Can _this_ be he--this white, awful, beautiful statue? Was ever crowned king, in purple and minever, half so majestical as he, as he lies on his narrow