* * * * *
Down in the hollows with the silken fans of the half-opened beech-leaves overhead, a saffron-coloured azalea dropping its gold upon the blue, the pink campion struggling for a place amongst the blossoms, a tuft of white poet's-narcissus looking up from the pool of water into which a scarce-seen runlet dripped and dropped. What colour! What almost unimaginable beauty.
* * * * *
Out in the open, in a cup in the hills where the carpet of heaven-blue hyacinths dwarfed into closer growth showed like a shadowy cloud against the clearer blue of the sky. What dreamfulness! What peace!
* * * * *
Away on the springing heather on the mountain-top, with half Wales spread before you, and the westering sun obscured by just such a shadowy cloud, sending a great sloping corona of light rays to nestle in the dimples of the hills, and shine in shafted reflections on the distant sea.
What visions of unending space, of ceaseless life!
* * * * *
"Is it not time?" she said at last as they sat in the sheep-shelter.
The sun was beginning to sink in the west calmly, serenely. The light shone round them, purest gold. Down in the valley, the blue hyacinth mist grew darker, colder.
"Yes! It is time," he said quietly.
"It has been quite perfect," she said again.
"Almost perfect," he assented; after all he was but human, and humanity does not live by sight alone. It craves to touch also.
The motor was awaiting them where they had left it.
She laid her hand on his for a second ere he started it.
"Say it has been quite perfect, Ned," she pleaded.
He looked at her and smiled. "I will not say it--you can say it for me."
She was silent for a moment and then she spoke.
"It has been quite perfect!"
The motor sped on, the mist wreaths of the hyacinths grew dulled by young green sprouting ferns, and the rocks closed in for the swift turn by the school. The children were already out, and a group of them were playing on the road. They scattered, leaving it clear. And then, suddenly, from the shadow of the parapet-wall a little toddling child, escaping from the hand of its wide-eyed curiosity-struck elder, lurched out into the open.
"Oh Ned! Take care--the child--the child!"
Aura stood up, and in Ned's sudden swerve inwards, an overhanging root from the high rocky bank above struck her full upon the temple.
The child, shrieking more from joyous excitement than fear, lurched back with outstretched arms to the shadow; but Aura sank back, her head resting on Ned's shoulder.
"My God! Aura!" he cried. There was no answer. He did not stop the car, but sweeping it round the open space by the school, raced back to Cwmfaernog. There, he knew, all was ready for her reception, there everything would be to hand. As he sped through the misty blue cloud once more, he saw nothing of it. His eyes were on her whitening face.
Dear God! How limp she felt, as he lifted her in his arms and carried her across the drawbridge, and so through the garden to the house. A scent of violets and primroses, of lilies of the valley, of all things sweet assailed him as he entered the door that was only latched. He had brought the flowers when he had come down secretly to see that all things were prepared. He had brought themfor her!And the table set out with flowers and fruit--that wasfor heralso.
He stumbled up the stairs with his heavy burden to her room. He had not entered that. He had only climbed once more to her window-sill to set it abloom with white and purple iris--the messengers of the gods. How they mocked him now with their tale of immortality. His mind went back to many a Kashmir grave which he had seen, long and narrow like the sill set as thick with irises, high upon the hills, low amongst the dales.
But she could not be dead!
Yet her head lay on the pillow just as it had touched it, her arm slipping from his support sank, till it could sink no more.
"Aura!" he muttered faintly "Aura!"
He knelt and laid his ear to her heart--oh! sweetest resting--place in all the world!
There was no sound, no beat. Yes! she was dead!
He turned his face round into the soft pillow of her breast and whispered "Aura." It seemed to him as on that midsummer night when he had first met her, as if all the world were wailing "Aura! Aura!"
How long he knelt there he scarcely knew; a faint sense of sound in the house roused him to the remembrance that something must be done.
He must call for help. But if he did that, every one must know that she was here with him alone. The world would judge, and what would that judgment reck of her spotlessness or his forbearance? No! that must not be, if he could compass otherwise.
His mind, almost unhinged by the terrible shock, chased possibility through a thousand impossibilities, the least grotesque of these being a grave of his own digging amongst the hyacinths; his subsequent flight being easy, since he had made all arrangements for a sudden disappearance.
Was that a noise below--a faint creak on the stairs? The possibility troubled him. He crossed to the door, and opened it to find himself confronted by Ted Cruttenden, his face distorted by passion.
"You scoundrel!" he cried. "You--you infernal scoundrel--where is Aura--my wife?"
His very vehemence, his very lack of self restraint, brought back Ned Blackborough's wandering wits. He closed the door behind him, and stood with his back to it.
"She is--not there," he said slowly. "Ted! listen for one moment. I brought her here----"
"Do you think I don't know that, you damned villain," burst out Ted--"when I came home this morning and found you had taken her--there was some cock-and-bull story the servants had about not sitting up for her, and a latch-key and all that rot--do you think I was fool enough not to understand--I've never really trusted you. And now--and now--let me pass in, I say, or there'll be murder done."
"Listen one moment----" the voice was inexorable. "You never trusted me. I know that. Have you not trusted her? Are you fool enough to have lived day and night with her, to have lain with your head upon her breast--and not known--No! it is impossible. You know what she is--you must--you do know it----"
Even to Ted Cruttenden's mad jealousy, memory could bring no fuel to feed the flame; his very anger sank for the moment to self-pity.
"I come home," he muttered, "I find her gone. I follow. I have walked over the hill to----"
"To--spy upon us----" interrupted Ned sternly, "go on."
"To spy upon you if you will," cried Ted, his passion rising again--"and I find you here, in her room----"
Ned opened the door behind him quietly. "Because she is dead," he said, and leaning against the lintel, his head upon his arm, waited.
"Dead!"
The whisper reached him from within full almost of fear; and there was a long empty silence.
"You will not say I killed her, I suppose," said Ned bitterly at last. "It was an accident. We were going back--back to you----" The very wonder of that fact stayed speech; but he knew he must go on. "I am quite ready to let you shoot me, by and by, but at present--I--I want you to think of her--of yourself. I don't count. I need count any more. But we must be quick about it. As I stand before--before Something that is mightier than I, I swear to you that I have done you no harm. We won't go into the other question as to what harm you have done me. And for her--you know. But--but even if we had, what use is there now, in making a fuss in letting the world know that you have found her there--with me. Not a soul knows I am here. You can take my place, as you have taken it before. I can go, as I have gone before."
From within, where Ted Cruttenden stood beside the bed, vaguely remorseful at his own lack of anything save anger, horror, regret, no answer came.
"Ted," went on Lord Blackborough, "you must decide. I can go the way you came, and you can call for help. It must be done at once. I'll tell you how it happened so that you may know. We got here about noon. We didn't go into the house. We were--we were in the woods and on the hills----" his voice failed a little, then grew monotonous. "She said it was time to go, and I--I was a fool! I said so too. Just at the corner by the school, a child, a little child, ran in front of the car. She--she called out--and rose. There was a root--oh! Curse the damned thing--it struck her as I swerved. It has left a little blue mark--you can see it on her temple if you look. She never spoke. I brought her back. She was dead."
"You say you didn't kill her," burst out Ted, his voice now full of crude anger, grief, hate, "but you did. You brought her here."
"Is there any use in recriminations," asked Ned wearily, "you have to decide. And, after all, she--she was no wife for you--you are young yet----" Ted listening, cursed him for repeating the inward thought that had forced itself into his mind. "You have all the world before you--and----" for an instant the voice hesitated as if ashamed, uncertain, then went on. "I had made out a deed of gift to you of a hundred and fifty thousand pounds. It is about all I have left, and the works and all that must go to the heir, you know. You see I meant to disappear, and I meant to take your wife,--so this was just payment. It can be just payment still. I shall not trouble you again. But--but you must decide at once."
He stood waiting for a moment or two, his head resting as before upon his upraised arm upon the lintel; then he heard a step, and lifted his eyes to check what he knew all too well would come from Ted's lips. Did he not know it? Was it not the answer of the world where everything even honour had its price? And was it not far better, far wiser? Was it not what he himself desired?
"You will find the motor by the bridge," he said quietly. "You had better call some one from the village first, and then the doctor. The children will give evidence, some of them were quite big, and no one at New Park knows anything. Good-bye? I shan't see you again."
When Ted had gone, he closed the door, went downstairs, gathered up the tell-tale flowers and fruits which he had brought, climbed to the window-sill and removed the iris, so, putting them all into a basket, went back to the woods.
Before the car returned with its first consignment of help, the misty-blue wreaths of the hyacinths, darkening with the dusk, had hidden him.
He roused himself, for the night was passing. The last twinkling lights--the lights which he had been almost--unconsciously watching in the valley below him--had gone.
But one steady star remained. That came from the room where she lay dead. It seemed incredible. Such sudden endings to all things came into life sometimes, of course; still why should they come into his? It was unfair. He risked everything on this one stake. Bit by bit he had given up everything else. He had chased love to the outside edge of the world, and now--it had gone over the verge.
He stood up and stretched himself, wondering vaguely how he had passed the last few hours. He had slept for a while, he knew. That was at the beginning, after he had gone down to the hollow where they had sat together, and where he had planted the iris by the side of the narcissus which was too proud to look for its fellow in the earth-bounded pool at its feet. It had amused him--yes! positively amused him--to dig holes for the bulbs with his pen-knife, and make a grave--long and narrow like the window-sill--just such a grave as he remembered on hill and dale at Kashmir. And it was not an empty grave either; for he had buried in it the violets and the primroses, the lilies of the valley and all things sweet.
In that first hour he must have been almost crazy with grief.
But then, he remembered, he had lain down half-hidden by the hyacinths, dog-tired in mind and body to sleep a dreamless sleep. Then he had come and watched the lights until it should be dark enough for the night to bring disguise.
Now it had come, and it was time to be going.
Whither?
As if that mattered! He had come prepared for a secret journey, and there was a hundred pounds odd in his pocket. The thought made him smile bitterly. So far as outward circumstances stood, he was in exactly the same position as he had been two years ago when he and Ted had first met in a bicycle smash. In exactly the same position since what was there to prevent his turning up at New Park in a few days, and resuming his life as Lord Blackborough? There was nothing to prevent it since the deed of gift could stand, of course; nothing but his utter weariness. It would be better to start afresh.
He looked at his watch. Yes! it was time he was off. He would walk down the coast road to Pot-âfon; thence take the cargo steamer to Liverpool. All roads meet there. He would go off to the wilds somewhere, and after a year if--if nothing changed--he could easily fabricate his own death, and let the heir come into what he did not want.
He set off for his night walk cheerfully enough. The glamour of that past day was upon him still, he seemed to hear her voice saying for him "It has been quite perfect." In reality those had been her last words, since the cry "the child! the child!" had been wrung from her by chance--by one of the unhappy chances and changes of this most unhappy world.
"It has been quite perfect." Ay! perhaps, but in the past tense. What of the present?
He paused at the bridge below the village where the mountain stream joined the river Afon, to look down to the still pool below the arch.
In the moonlight it looked very quiet. One might sleep there without dreams if people would only leave one alone, but they would not. He leant over the parapet and smiled at the oddness of one hive of swarming atoms, objecting to another hive of atoms choosing the hollow of a pool wherein to rest, interfering to fish it up and put it somewhere else in order to disintegrate into atoms again.
And after the atoms? There lay the question. The atom and the human consciousness? Were not both an equal mystery born of the unity beyond?
As he stood there absorbed in thought the sound of rapid footsteps echoed down the steep road from Dinas and, not wishing to be seen, he stepped back at once into the shadow of a tree that overhung the bridge. Looking up the roadway he saw a woman's figure. She was running swiftly with a curious unevenness, a curious uncertainty, yet evidently with some set purpose. As she passed him he caught a glimpse of her face, and--mere hive of atoms though he was--he started after her in a second.
None too soon either! He had just had hold of her in time, as she wavered for an instant on the parapet.
"You young fool!" he said roughly. "What's the matter? What are you doing that for?"
The girl--she did not look more than twenty--stared at him vacantly as if she did not understand what he meant, then with a little cry of horror apparently at herself, covered her face with her hands, and crouched down beneath his touch in a perfect storm of sobs.
"Don't cry!" he said more kindly, "What is it all about? What were you going to do?"
"I--I don't know," she wept. "It--it came upon me suddenly that it was the only way--it swept me off my feet--oh! wicked, wicked girl that I am--if--if it hadn't been for you--Oh! what shall I do? What shall I do?"
"What's wrong?" he asked, impatient at her helpless emotion. "Anything I can help? Come! it's no use crying. Of course you're a wicked girl, but as you evidently don't really want to kill yourself you'll have to live. So you had better make a clean breast of it. I daresay I can help--if it isn't----" Her face looked innocent and pure, still one never could tell. "Come--out with it"--he went on--"If it's anything about money----"
She caught at the word. "Money! Oh! if I could only get the money," she wailed.
"Come!" he said with a smile, "if it is only money----"
So by degrees she told him her name was Alicia Edwards. She was the happiest, luckiest girl in the world, who was to be married in two days to the man she loved--to a saint upon earth. And she bore an unblemished character. And her father was also a saint upon earth. But that very evening by the post had come--not a bolt from the blue--for she had had an awful prescience that it would come, though who would have thought that Myfanwy would be so cruel, and she just married to the man she loved! Oh! it was wicked! A bill, and such a bill too! A hundred and three pounds; and if it was not paid for at once it would be sent. Oh! she would go mad with shame.
"What was it for?" asked Ned, wearily good-natured.
"That is it," wailed poor Alicia, "it is for hats and dresses. And I ought to have paid. And what am I, a minister's wife, to ask him to pay such bills. And my father will not. What am I to do? If I was a bad girl it would be nothing; but I am good, so very good! I cannot face them saying I am bad."
"They would have said you were mad, I suppose, if you had jumped from the bridge just now," said Ned grimly.
Alicia looked at him furtively and wept again.
What a world it was, thought Ned bitterly. Here was a well-educated, deeply-religious girl occupied entirely in thinking what her neighbours would say of her; those neighbours who, in a way, were as responsible as she. For was not humanity, as a whole, responsible for all the deeds of humanity. Was he not, in a way, responsible for his own birth, being as he was, but the outcome of his forefathers? Virtue and vice, honour and dishonour, were they not all hidden in that first Step of dancing Prakrit? So there came to him for once a great humility, a patient acceptance of all the evil in the world as being part of himself.
"I will give you the money, child," he said; "you shall marry the saint and be a saint yourself--why not?"
"I can't--I can't take it," she muttered, for all that holding fast to the purse he gave her; "I can't take it from a stranger."
"A stranger?" he echoed. "Bah! In the beginning, little girl, you and I were one. Remember that in all your little life. As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end--Amen!"
He stooped and kissed her as he left her at her father's door, and she stood looking after him, wondering if he were indeed a man or a vision. But the money was there. A hundred pounds in notes and three sovereigns. She would send them by the morning's post to Myfanwy Pugh, and then----
Alicia Edwards fell on her knees beside her bed and thanked God for the money.
Meanwhile Ned Blackborough had paused to re-make his plans in his new condition of pennilessness; for he had but a few shillings left for the immediate present. Afterwards there was money and to spare awaiting him at various points on the route which he had carefully prepared for flight. Still he must first get to a point.
Then the remembrance of the hundred pounds he had hidden away in the cleft of the rock up on the hills came to him, making him laugh; because there was no question now as to who needed it. He came back to it a beggar; beggared, indeed, of all save life. Yet life was all. The words of the Indian sage came back to him:--
"Indestructible the life is, spreading life thro' all.I say to Thee weapons reach not the life.Flame burns it not, waters cannot overwhelmNor dry winds wither it. Impenetrable,Unentered, unassailed, unharmed, untouched,Immortal, all arriving, stable, sure,Thus is the Life declared."
"Indestructible the life is, spreading life thro' all.I say to Thee weapons reach not the life.Flame burns it not, waters cannot overwhelmNor dry winds wither it. Impenetrable,Unentered, unassailed, unharmed, untouched,Immortal, all arriving, stable, sure,Thus is the Life declared."
Vaguely he felt comforted. The sense of Unity lay around him in the air. He saw the Golden Gateway. He knew that its Door was open. But his love kept him from entering. He could yield himself without one sigh to the Beginning that was the End, but he could not yield her, for he had not yet realised that she also was the Beginning, the End.
The dawn was just breaking as he reached the gap, and searching in the cleft found nothing.
Was he glad, or was he sorry? He was not sure. In a way he felt more free, since he need now have no plans for the future. He could sit down and watch the sun rise. After that he could walk over Llwydd-y-Bryd to the coastline by the country town, and so--anywhere!
This was sufficient, surely, for the moment.
The sun rose in a panoply of purple and red with, low down above the hills, a band or two of torquoise blue to hint of the vast fields of calm ether beyond the storm clouds of the world.
"Aura! Aura! Aura!"
Even there, to the far, unending depths, the cry echoed. A cry apart, poignant with individual anguish.
He started up and moved on. The staghorn moss trailed clinging to the soil beneath his feet, a hawk hovering in the air was held to its place also by the same force which sent the world on which he stood, spinning on its way. But still that love, that grief of his, would not be made one with Nature.
"Aura! Aura! Aura!"
He stood on the summit of Llydd-y-Bryd once more. Even the "gingerbeer" had gone from the shieling now; but it would not be long before humanity returned once more with placard and paste-pot to appropriate the spot to base uses.
Down in the blue hollow yonder lay Cwmfaernog, and in Cwmfaernog lay--no! not Aura! Aura was of the woods and hills. He could feel her in them separate, distinct from himself. He would not give her up; he could not. He would give one more look at the peaceful little valley from the crag yonder, and then take her with him; something he would not yield, not even to the Force which held the round world sure.
The round world perhaps--but--ye Gods!
His foot slipped, he caught at a root to save himself, it gave way--he fell.
The hot noon-tide sun was beating down on him when he woke to consciousness again. He tried to move, and could not. After a time his mind returned clearly; he pinched himself upon the thigh and felt nothing. That, then, was the reason why he felt no pain, for one of his legs was evidently broken. He had injured his spine, and it was paralysed below the waist. This, then, was the end.
"Aura! Aura!"
His heart leapt up in him. It could not be long now.
He was lying in the corrie into which he and Ted had vainly tried to get that first night of the storm, and as he lay he could watch the sun tilt from its high glory in the heavens, to touch the world in the west then disappear. It would be a beautiful sunset. How many more would he see, he wondered. How long would it last? Some days perhaps.
How idle all things--money, happiness, even love itself seemed beside this certainty of leaving them all. The only thing that money had brought to him was the death of a wild animal--thank God!--alone! Except for Aura.
Aura! Aura! Aura!
Yes! she had been right. Love like his needed nothing. It could exist--nay! grow to greater strength without trivialities. They were beyond the Shadow of the Night now; nothing could touch them again. They would go on and on....
That night he slept a little under the stars, and in his dreams he saw her walking amid the drifts of iris leading a little child by the hand. Her face was sad, and as he tried to comfort her, his eyes opened; and lo! it was dawn once more.
A primrose dawn, with little faint, far grey clouds just flecking the wide waste of gold.
"It was quite perfect."
Her words came back to him. She was wrong. The part could not be perfect, and what were they, their griefs, their joys, their loves, but part of the great whole.
His mind was beginning to wander a little, and in the high noon tide he slept to dream that he saw the little child alone. Her head was crowned with iris flowers, her feet were among them, her eyes were violet and white as they were. They looked into his. "Mother says you have no right," came her childish voice. "I am the immortality of the race. Die and forget her. Die and forget all things."
When he awoke, a raven, perched on a rock hard by, cawed hoarsely, and flapped lazily away to watch from a greater distance.
A few drops of water trickled from the rock close beside him. He had hollowed out a little cup for it with his hand and drank of it from time to time. Now he poured some of it on his head which had begun to ache. What use was there in prolonging the agony? The sooner it was over the better. He searched in his pockets for any scrap of paper which might betray him, and, tearing them up, dug them toilfully into the ground, almost amusing himself in restoring the spot to perfect homogeneity with its surroundings.
His gold signet ring he flung away into the little pool, which, collecting the surface drainage of the very summit, brimmed up below the rock to overflow in a tiny stream. He tried to make a duck and drake of it as his last contribution to the sovereign remedy, but he failed, and he smiled at his failure.
He was becoming very much detached, even from himself, and the one thing to which he clung was the memory of his love.
Aura! Aura! Aura!
He must find her somewhere; and she seemed so close! Sometimes he wondered if she were not there, in his eyes, in his heart.
"Aura," he murmured to himself; "Aura!"
That night he slept dreamlessly. And when he opened his eyes, lo! there was a Sea of Light. The great shining arch of the sky seemed to him the golden gate; the open door lay behind him. He was on the other side. He had found himself and her as they had been always, not as a part but as the whole.
"Tad ek am," he thought, realising with a rush that He was All Things, and that All Things were in Him. So, as he lay gazing, the round sun rose gloriously, and he sank into unconsciousness.
* * * * *
When he awoke it was to find himself in a work-house infirmary; a long, bare room set in a straight row with beds. Some hive of atoms must have found him on the mountain-top and brought him to die here. Well! it could not be for long. There was a black screen folded up, ready for use, at the foot of the bed. He knew what that meant; but nothing seemed to matter now that he had passed the open door to lose and find Himself.
"Only those who lose can find." His mind, blurred, confused, lingered over this certainty.
"He is conscious," said a voice beside him, and a face, dark, curiously eager, bent over him. It was Morris Pugh's. Walking over the hills that morning on his way to Cæron, the county town, he had come upon Ned Blackborough, had summoned help, and brought him to the infirmary. And now, although having seen him but once in his life, he had failed to recognise the light-hearted maker of ducks-and-drakes in the worn, unconscious man, so close to death, he longed with all the eagerness that was in him, that, ere he had to leave him to death, he might have the chance of saying some word for the Master. For these eighteen months of hard, practical work in the slums of London while they had sobered Morris Pugh, had left him still ardent.
"Hullo!" said Ned weakly. "I've seen you before somewhere--haven't I?" He paused, and some one gave him another spoonful of stimulant. He wondered vaguely why he took it, since death must come; but it was as well to please people--if you could. "I remember now," he went on, as if he were recalling it from very far away. "It was when we hid the hundred pounds. You were the parson who said, 'Money was the root of all evil.'" He gave a ghost of a smile, then looked into the dark eyes curiously. "I suppose you took it?"
Morris Pugh flushed at the very memory of that never-to-be-forgotten search for God's providence on the mountain-top.
"So it was you who made the ducks and drakes--I remember," he said slowly. "No! I did not take it; but--but I looked for it, and it was gone."
"Gone," echoed Ned, and lay thinking.
"Then it must have been Ted who took it," he murmured, going back into the past. "He must have gone that midsummer night--why, yes! of course----" Then suddenly his dulled mind grasped the whole sequence of events. "He--and Hirsch--that is how he got Aura--my money--damn him!"
"Hush!" came Morris Pugh's voice sternly. "You stand too close to the judgment yourself for curses----"
"I--I will say bless him, if that suits you better," murmured Ned wearily. "And if you don't mind--I prefer to stand alone."
"No man can stand alone before the judgment seat of God," pleaded Morris Pugh earnestly. "I do not know what your life has been, but the best of us need an advocate; and there is One."
"My life?" echoed Ned dreamily. "I want to forget my life--not to talk about it--if you would go--and leave me." Then he opened his eyes again. "Did you bring me here?"
"Yes! I brought you--I found you unconscious. But there is One who will bring you safe into the fold."
"I wonder if you would--be kind enough to let me--die alone."
"Alone!" echoed Morris Pugh. "You can never be alone. And even for this world, would you not like us to call your friends--to let them know?"
"I--I have my friends," he answered; "I want--nothing."
So after whispering about him regretfully, they left him for a while, and he lay staring at a ray of sunlight which slanted through the window at the further end of the ward, and fell, in a golden glory, upon an empty bed. If it had only fallen upon his!
Gold! Yes! everything was gold in this world. How people fought for it, selling their souls, their bodies for it! yet how little it meant. A hideous mockery, indeed, was this Christian greed of gold. And yet money meant much--Ted--damn him!
"Mate," came a voice from the next bed, where a tramp, hollow-eyed, unshaven, who was recovering from an attack of pneumonia, had lain listening, coughing. "'Tain't no business o' mine in a way, but there ain't no good your lyin' an' damnin' a man as ain't done you no 'arm. 'Tain't in a way fair on you for me ter let you go to 'ell over a lie. It's the rumm'est start as I sh'ud be 'ere, but--ye see, Ted--'ooever 'e may be--didn't take that 'undred--I took it."
"You!" he said faintly.
"Me!" echoed the tramp. "It's--it's the rumm'est start; but--you see I was on the lay atwixt Blackborough an' Liverpool. Outer-work-an'-emigration lay it 'twas, an' not a bad one in the summer time, for them Welsh is generous. I was asleep in the gorse close by when you two come by an' smashed. Then you begun shieing the shiners about, an' I waited thinkin' to get some of 'em out after you'd gone. An' I did too, what with bein' able to dive. But there! The 'ole thing wasn't much worth; not more than one good drunk, an' then it was over. But don't you go a-lyin' an' damnin' the wrong fellar. It was me, not 'im; so curse me an' welcome if it do you any good."
He rolled over on his pillow, and said no more.
Ned lay still, and smiled inwardly. His mind was clouding fast. He felt vaguely glad that Ted had not taken the money. But, then, how could he have taken it, seeing that it had never existed? They had all thought of it, and relied on it, and gone to look for it; and there was nothing. It never had been anything but a dream.
The gold sun-ray had crept down the ward. It lay now closer to him. If he could only die in the sunlight! That was the only gold worth having.
How the atoms danced in it! unceasing, endless. He felt their vibration in himself, but beyond the dancer lay sightlessness, and touchlessness, and soundlessness.
Faint voices came to him from around his bed.
"There is time yet! Repent and be saved. Put your trust in Him! Keep your eyes fixed on Him--remember that you are bought with a price."
There was just the flicker of a faint courteous smile.
"Caveat Emptor," murmured the dying man, and turned his face to the sun-ray. "Aura!" he murmured. "Tad ek am."
The sun--ray shifted, crept to his bed, and lay there, golden.