The other, at whose heart the death-angel knocked, lay in one corner
of an old and dilapidated room, on a pallet of straw. No soft hand
wandered caressingly among his dark locks, or cooled with its cold
touch the fever of his forehead. The dim, flickering rays of the
tallow candle wandered over the features now grown stark and rigid
with the death-chill. No grief-printed face bent in anguish above
him; no eye watched for the latest breath; no ear for the dying
word; but through the half-open door, came to the ear of the dying
boy the coarse laugh of the inebriate--the jest of the vile, and the
frightful blasphemies of those whose way is the way of death.
None saw the last life-light, as it broke into the dark, spiritual
eyes of the boy. None saw the smile that played like the light
around the lips of a seraph, about his blue and cold lips, as they
spoke exceeding joyfully, "Father! Father, I have called and you
have heard me; I am coming to you, coming now; for the angels beckon
me;" and the pale clay on that sunken pallet was all that remained
of the boy.
Together they met, those two children who had stood together in the
earthly courts of the Most High, and whom the angel had
simultaneously called from the earth, beneath the shining
battlements of "the city of God.
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