I don"t know whether it surprised me, or not, to find the house in commotion when I woke the next morning, and to hear that John Whitney was dying. A remarkable change had certainly taken place in him. He lay in bed; not insensible, but almost speechless.
Breakfast was scarcely over when Mr. Carden"s carriage drove in. He had been with Barrington, having started from Worcester at day-dawn. John knew him, and took his hand and smiled.
"What"s to be done for him?" questioned Sir John, pointing to his son.
Mr. Carden gave one meaning look at Sir John, and that was all. Nothing more of any kind could be done for John Whitney.
"Good-bye, Mr. Carden; good-bye," said John, as the surgeon was leaving.
"You have been very kind."
"Good-bye, my boy."
"It is so sudden; so soon, you know, Carden," cried poor Sir John, as they walked downstairs together. "You ought to have warned me that it was coming."
"I did not know it would be quite so soon as this," was Mr. Carden"s answer--and I heard him say it.
John had visitors that day, and saw them. Some of the fellows from Frost"s, who came over when they heard how it was; Dr. Frost himself; and the clergyman. At dusk, when he had been lying quietly for some time, except for the restlessness that often ushers in death, he opened his eyes and began speaking in a whisper. Lady Whitney, thinking he wanted something, bent down her ear. But he was only repeating a verse from the Bible.
"And there shall be no night there: and they need no candle, neither light of the sun, for the Lord G.o.d giveth them light: and they shall reign for ever and ever."
Bill, who had his head on the bolster on the other side, broke into a hushed sob. It did not disturb the dying. They were John"s last words.
Quite a crowd went to his funeral. It took place on the following Thursday. Dr. Frost and Mr. Carden (and it"s not so often _he_ wasted his time going to a funeral!) and Featherstone and the Squire amongst them. Poor Sir John sobbed over the grave, and did not mind who saw and heard him, while they cast the earth on the coffin.
"_Earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust; in sure and certain hope of the Resurrection to eternal life._"
That the solemn promise was applicable to John Whitney, and that he had most a.s.suredly entered on that glorious life, I knew as well then as I know now. The corruptible had put on incorruption, the mortal immortality.
Not much of a story, you will say. But I might have told a worse. And I hope, seeing we must all go out at the same gate, that we shall be as ready for it as he was.
JOHNNY LUDLOW.
THE END.