The night darkened
again and the stars came out more clearly with their cold distant
glitter. Nature's breathless hush and expectancy continued, and
there was no sound without and no answer within the heart of the
despairing man. At last, in weakness and discouragement, he moaned:
"Well, thank God, brave Ida Mayhew put an honorable purpose in my
heart before I died, and I meant to have carried it out. There's
no use of praying, for it seems as if I were no more than one of
these millions of leaves over my head when it falls from its place.
Nature is pitiless and God is as cold towards me as I was once to
one who turned her appealing eyes to me for a little kindness and
sympathy. O God! if I must die, let it be soon, for my pain and
thirst are becoming intolerable."
The dawn was now brightening the east. Nature as if tired of
waiting--like some professed friends--for one who was long in dying,
ceased its breathless hush. A fresh breeze rustled the motionless
leaves, birds withdrew their heads from under their wings, and
began the twittering preliminary to their morning songs; and two
squirrels, springing from their nest in a hollow tree, like children
from a cottage door, scrambled down and over Van Berg's prostrate
form in their wild sport, but he was too weak, too far gone in
dull, heavy apathy to heed them.
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