He took my hand in his hands and asked me again if I would go to the Bishop to say the words which he had given me, and I, with swimming eyes that saw nothing of the dying face before me, bowed my head, and answered, I will go. Near three hours longer he lived, and much of that time he passed in a feeble delirium. But just before the end came he awoke, and motioned to a small bag that hung about his waist. I guessed his meaning, and drawing out a crucifix I placed it in his hands. Then he passed silently away, and Death, the black camel that had knelt at the gate of my lone house these seven years of death-in-life, had entered it at last to take another man than me. CHAPTER XLIII OF HIS GREAT RESOLVE When he had ceased to breathe, the air of my house became suddenly void and empty. With a great awe upon me I rose and stretched him out on the settle, and covered his white face with a cloth. Then in the silence I sat and tried to think of the strange accident that had that night befallen. One thing I saw with a fearful certainty, that a great burden of responsibility had fallen upon me. I thought of the people of this island perishing in their sickness, and I remembered that I alone of all men here knew how to succor and save them. I alone, and who was I? The one man accursed among men; the one man cut off forever from the company of the living; the man without family or kin or name among the people; whose flesh no man might touch with his flesh; whose eye no other eye might look upon. And thus with the burden of responsibility came a yet more terrible burden of doubt. Was it for me to break through the dread judgment pronounced upon me, and go down among the people to heal them? And if I went would the people receive me, even in this their last extreme? Before the face of death would all other fears sink out of their sight? Or, fearing death itself less than the curse, would they rise up and drive me from them? Long I sat in the anguish of black misgivings, and then rose and ranged my room from side to side, if perchance I might find some light in my darkness. And oft did the strangeness of that night's accidents so far bewilder me that for an instant it would seem that I must be in a dream. Once I lifted the face-cloth from the face on the settle that I might be sure that I was awake. At length it fixed itself on my mind that whatsoever the judgment upon me, and whatsoever the people's terror of it, I had no choice but to bear the burden that was now mine own. Go down among my sick countrymen I should and must, let the end be what it would! Accursed man though I was, yet to fulfil the dead priest's mission was a mission wherewith God Himself seemed to charge me!