"We will be careful. We will not wake him."

"Ah, no, that ye will not, for he is dead."

"Dead?"

"Yes, what triumph it is to know it! None can harm him, none
insult him more. He is in heaven now, and happy; or if not there,
he bides in hell and is content; for in that place he will find
neither abbot nor yet bishop. We were boy and girl together; we
were man and wife these five and twenty years, and never separated
till this day. Think how long that is to love and suffer together.
This morning was he out of his mind, and in his fancy we were
boy and girl again and wandering in the happy fields; and so in
that innocent glad converse wandered he far and farther, still
lightly gossiping, and entered into those other fields we know
not of, and was shut away from mortal sight. And so there was
no parting, for in his fancy I went with him; he knew not but
I went with him, my hand in his--my young soft hand, not this
withered claw. Ah, yes, to go, and know it not; to separate and
know it not; how could one go peace--fuller than that? It was
his reward for a cruel life patiently borne."

There was a slight noise from the direction of the dim corner where
the ladder was. It was the king descending. I could see that he
was bearing something in one arm, and assisting himself with the
other. He came forward into the light; upon his breast lay a
slender girl of fifteen. She was but half conscious; she was dying
of smallpox. Here was heroism at its last and loftiest possibility,