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346 couch, lay the dying man. He looked up eagerly as Father Tuathal approached: Reaching out his hand, Thore said:

“Come thou nearer!” Then, pleadingly, “Come thou nearer! Thou wert his friend! Thou didst love him! Ask him to take his eyes from me, his shining dark eyes. Ask him to cease the gaze he gave me in dying. It hath never left me! Come thou near me! I am going out where it is so dark, so dark; and I am sore afraid.”

A sense of horror came over Father Tuathal while Thore was speaking. Of whose dying eyes was he in such dread? In a flash the death scene of Father Meilge came to the priest. He shrank back from Thore, and a strong feeling of repulsion came upon him for the dying man.

“Come thou nearer!” pleaded the weak voice.

Faint and ill with the anticipation of the awful revelation that he knew trembled on the lips so soon to be sealed in death, Father Tuathal seemed unable to move. His love for his dead comrade and his horror of his sacrilegious murder, seemed to overpower him. The shaking hand was outstretched pleadingly, but to Father Tuathal’s gaze it was so stained with the blood of the beloved martyr that he thought he could never bring himself to touch it. The weak voice went on: “Why should his eyes follow me so? I have kept the vow I made to him. Every day have I said, ‘O Christ! show me thy light!’ I will accept