Page:The Father Confessor, Stories of Danger and Death.djvu/113

Rh my coming, but, thinking you were ill—and alone——"

"I am alone," I said—"alone, alone, deserted alike by God and man. Body and soul I am alone, and sick unto death."

"Despair not, my friend," said he. "I will attend you; you are sick, and morbid from being left alone. Rouse yourself, and I will try and help."

"Help me! no man can help me; I have helped no man. Unless you can give me another life to live with the knowledge I have of this."

"My dear friend, God alone can do that," his voice went on soothingly; "but you are truly sorry for your past?"

"Man," I cried, "there are no such things as death-bed repentances. Death is ever beside us a yawning precipice; as we walk along its edge we know that it is there. We look at the sky above it, at the flowers by its brink, but we never look at it; we turn our heads away, but we know that it is there. We feel the chill of it in the heat of the sun. We see its shadow on the petals of the flowers. We know that a false step, a stumble, and we are gone, plunged