This was the last prayer to which the Little Gentleman ever listened.
Some change was rapidly coming over him during this last hour of which
I have been speaking. The excitement of pleading his cause before his
self-elected spiritual adviser,——the emotion which overcame him, when
the young girl obeyed the sudden impulse of her feelings and pressed
her lips to his cheek,——the thoughts that mastered him while the
divinity-student poured out his soul for him in prayer, might well hurry
on the inevitable moment. When the divinity-student had uttered his last
petition, commending him to the Father through his Son’s intercession,
he turned to look upon him before leaving his chamber. His face was
changed.——There is a language of the human countenance which we all
understand without an interpreter, though the lineaments belong to the
rudest savage that ever stammered in an unknown barbaric dialect. By the
stillness of the sharpened features, by the blankness of the tearless
eyes, by the fixedness of the smileless mouth, by the deadening tints, by
the contracted brow, by the dilating nostril, we know that the soul is
soon to leave its mortal tenement, and is already closing up its windows
and putting out its fires.——Such was the aspect of the face upon which
the divinity-student looked, after the brief silence which followed his
prayer. The change had been rapid, though not that abrupt one which is
liable to happen at any moment in these cases.——The sick man looked
towards him.——Farewell,——he said——I thank you. Leave me alone with her.
When the divinity-student had gone, and the Little Gentleman found
himself alone with Iris, he lifted his hand to his neck, and took from
it, suspended by a slender chain, a quaint, antique-looking key,——the
same key I had once seen him holding. He gave this to her, and pointed to
a carved cabinet opposite his bed, one of those that had so attracted my
curious eyes and set me wondering as to what it might contain.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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