“O I cannot bear to have him die without a word of farewell and comfort!” she said, weeping.

The hours wore on, and the dying man’s pulse showed that he was sinking steadily.  Still he lay unconscious, moaning and gibbering, tossing from side to side as far as his failing strength permitted.  His wife would stand and gaze at him a few moments, and then walk the floor in agony.

“He can’t last much longer,” said a visitor, who felt his pulse and found it almost gone, while his breathing became more labored.  We waited in silence.  A thought seemed to strike the wife.  Without saying a word, she climbed upon the bed, took her dying husband’s head upon her lap, and, bending close above his face, began to sing.  It was a melody I had never heard before—­low, and sweet, and quaint.  The effect was weird and thrilling as the notes fell tremulous from the singer’s lips in the hush of that dead hour of the night.  Presently the dying man became more quiet, and before the song was finished he opened his eyes as a smile swept over his face, and as his glance fell on me I saw that he knew me.  He called my name, and looked up in the face that bent above his own, and kissed it.

“Thank God!” his wife exclaimed, her hot tears falling on his face, that wore a look of strange serenity.  Then she half whispered to me, her face beaming with a softened light: 

“That old song was one we used to sing together when we were first married in Baltimore.”

On the stream of music and memory he had floated back to consciousness, called by the love whose instinct is deeper and truer than all the science and philosophy in the world.

At dawn he died, his mind clear, and the voice of prayer in his ears, and a look of rapture in his face.

Dan W—­, whom I had known in the mines in the early days, had come to San Jose about the time my pastorate in the place began.  He kept a meat-market, and was a most genial, accommodating, and good-natured fellow.  Everybody liked him, and he seemed to like everybody.  His animal spirits were unfailing, and his face never revealed the least trace of worry or care.  He “took things easy,” and never quarreled with his luck.  Such men are always popular, and Dan was a general favorite, as the generous and honest fellow deserved to be.  Hearing that he was very sick, I went to see him.  I found him very low, but he greeted me with a smile.

“How are you today, Dan?” I asked, in the offhand way of the old times.

“It is all up with me, I guess,” he replied, pausing to get breath between the words; “the doctor says I can’t get out of this—­I must leave in a day or two.”

He spoke in a matter-of-fact way, indicating that he intended to take death, as he had taken life, easy.

“How do you feel about changing worlds, my old friend?”

“I have no say in the matter.  I have got to go, and that is all there is of it.”