and take as much time to it as he pleased. Helen and Wingfold both
would have told him he must not tire himself, but that Polwarth
never did. The dying should not have their utterances checked, or
the feeling of not having finished forced upon them. They will
always have plenty of the feeling without that.

A fit of coughing compelled him to break off, and when it was over,
he lay panting and weary, but with his large eyes questioning the
face of Polwarth. Then the little man spoke.

"He must give us every sort of opportunity for trusting him," he
said. "The one he now gives you, is this dulness that has come over
you. Trust him through it, submitting to it and yet trusting against
it, and you get the good of it. In your present state perhaps you
cannot even try to bring about by force of will any better state of
feeling or higher intellectual condition; but you can say to God
something like this: "See, Lord, I am dull and stupid, and care for
nothing: take thou care of everything for me, heart and mind and
all. I leave all to thee. Wilt thou not at length draw me out of
this my frozen wintery state? Let me not shrink from fresh life and
thought and duty, or be unready to come out of the shell of my
sickness when thou sendest for me. I wait thy will. I wait even the
light that I feel now as if I dared not encounter for weariness of
body and faintness of spirit."

"Ah!" cried Leopold, "there you have touched it! How can you know so
well what I feel?"

"Because I have often had to fight hard to keep death to his own
province, and not let him cross over into my spirit."