Page:Dealings with the dead.djvu/182

 the zephyr moving through the bushes, no longer pleased the ear by their soft, low buzz, but smote upon my parting soul like a last and dirgeful knell; while the warblings of the plumed songsters of the wood sounded to my soul like the sepulchral chants of Eastern story. Very soon the deep black pall, hung out upon the face of heaven, began slowly and remorselessly to come down, down, down, until my nostrils snuffed the vapors and the odors of the grave. The far-off horizon began cautiously to approach me, shutting out first one window of the sky and then another, until at last but a little space of light was left; and still the cloud-walls drew nearer, nearer still; the darkness and the fetor grew more fearfully dense by degrees; I gasped for breath; the effort pained me, and was fruitless; and the horrible agony consequent thereupon, for one moment re-illumed the brain; and the dreadful possibility, nay, the probability, that I was to die there alone, with no loved hand to smoothe my brow, no lip to kiss me 'good-bye' no tearful eye to watch my parting hour, sent a thrill along my brain almost too intense for endurance. The conviction that I must perish, uncared for by kind friends, out there in the wood, beneath the blue sky and the green trees, seized upon my soul, and the cold beads of perspiration that oozed from my brow and trickled down to the ground, attested the degree of mental agony I was undergoing. 'Good-bye, all ye beauties of the sense-world! farewell, all whom I have loved or been loved by!' I mentally said; and then, by a strong effort of will, nerved my soul for its expected flight. Soon there came a thrill, a shudder, an involuntary 'God, receive me!' and I felt that I was across the