A white curtain covered the window, but there was no blind, for this man always welcomed daylight. On the window-ledge there languished a cactus in a pot. It was a gift under the will of an old dead woman who had tended it and cherished it for twenty years. One easy chair stood beside the bed, and on a table at hand were food and medicine. Many came to see the dying man, and Humphrey Baskerville visited him twice or thrice in every week. More than once Nathan had desired to speak of private matters to his brother, but now he lacked the courage, and soon all inclination to discuss mundane affairs departed from him. There followed a feverish week, in which Nathan only desired to listen to religious conversation. Recorded promises of hope for the sinner were his penultimate interest on earth. He made use of a strange expression very often, and desired again and again to hear the Bible narrative that embraced it. "'This day shalt thou be with me in Paradise,'" he said to Humphrey and to many others. "I cling to that. It was spoken to a thief and a failure." All strove to comfort him, but a great mental incubus haunted his declining hours. His old sanguine character seemed entirely to have perished; and its place was taken by spirits of darkness and of terror. "'The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom,'" he said to Eliza Gollop, when she was alone with him. "If I'd marked that better, I might now have got beyond that stage and learned to love Him. But I'm in fear--my life hasn't took me further than that--all's fearful still." "No need in your case, I hope, so far as mortal man can say," she answered. "'Tis natural to be uneasy when the journey's end falls in sight; and we all ought to be. But then comes Christ and casts out fear. You've a right, so far as man can say, to trust Him and fear nought." "But man doesn't know. Yet He forgave the dying thief." "He did so, though us have no right to say whether 'twas a bit of rare kindness in Him, or whether he made a practice of it. But for my part I steadfastly believe that He do forgive everything but the sin against the Holy Ghost. Of course, that's beyond His power, and would never do." Mrs. Lintern spent much time at 'The White Thorn,' and since her visits relieved Eliza of work, she acquiesced in them, while reserving the right of private judgment. Priscilla and her children all saw the sufferer together more than once; and then came a day when Heathman, Cora, and Phyllis took their leave of him. The young man then secreted his emotion and roamed for an hour alone upon the Moor; the girls felt it but little. Cora declared afterwards to Phyllis that since this great confession had been made, her mind dimly remembered her tender youth and a man in it. This man she had regarded as her father. All the children were deceived at an early age. They had, indeed, been led implicitly to suppose that their father died soon after the birth of Phyllis.