loathing his sins and mourning after the pardon of them, but there most delicately--O Ben, Ben, as a fellow sinner I foresaw this and my bowels yearned for him--there most delicately did he lay down a mild brown memento of his presence as a representative of the secular arm. Thereat he shuddered but the act was done, _ad majorem lignocapitis humani gloriam_. He listened then as it were with an absent mind. He cocked his red head at me as we listened, and I knew then, Benjamin, I knew from the shameless manner of his conversation that mercy and salvation had passed him by. He sampled the pink surface with an heretical tongue and thought little of it. Lost even to the sense of decorum, he r'ared up behind and scrubbed his ultimate legs--furtively, however, you understand, like any other boy in church. And then at last (in fact at very long last) he rose up and buzzed away--relieved but not saved, not saved at all, by the resonance of an Amen." Later. Mm-yas--much later, if at all.... He walked in the mist, no longer remembering but in the here-and-now, coming at length to the cottage, where he would have tapped on the window, but Amadeus Welland came to him across the lawn out of the mist. "I slept a while but was restless. A turn around the garden--sends me off sometimes. Is it one of his bad nights, Reuben?" "Nay, not bad, in fact I thought him rather cheerful, as far as one can guess. I read to him, his usual Montaigne, and then a little from the _Religio_ because he seemed to be listening and enjoying it. When Kate relieved me I think he was not far from sleep. Ah, how long, Amadeus?" "No one could possibly say. I once knew the apoplexy to leave a woman quite motionless and yet alive for six years. Others go in a few moments, a few weeks. And there are remissions, don't forget. It's no mere word of comfort to say that he might recover his speech, even the use of his left side, or partial use. I've seen that happen. Or it might be that when he falls asleep tonight, or some night, he won't wake." "He said once--if I rightly understood the words, but he was excited, trying too hard to speak, and so they were difficult--he said he could not die until Ben comes home." "Well.... The mere thought of it might do much to keep him in this world a while. Nobody understands the power of the mind over the flesh--or ought I to say, over the rest of the flesh? Or the power of flesh over the mind. We don't know, we don't know." "I know it is May, and a misty night." "Yes, and thou art here."