ounted his
pulse-beats.

"Ninety-four, and growing quicker!" he exclaimed, turning toward me with
a frightened look.

"It won't increase much," my uncle whispered, feebly, but with a
cool and professional air. "It will go down soon, and then death will
follow."

"Be calm, Rayel," he continued, almost sternly, as his son began
weeping. "Be calm, I say! That music! do you hear it, child? Do you see
what is passing now? Tell it. Let me hear you."

"I cannot hear it," said Rayel, looking earnestly into his father's
face.

"Hallucination!" he whispered, groping about until his hand rested
on the head of his son, who was kneeling beside him. "I seem to see
millions of forms around me. I seem to hear them, but I cannot see
you--nor hear you."

As if exhausted by the effort, his head fell back upon Rayel's shoulder,
and he lay for a time, his eyes closed, struggling for breath. The
dying man's faculties would no longer obey the whip of his mighty will.
Indeed, they had done him their final service, for in a few moments
he was dead. Tenderly and manfully, uttering no sound of grief, Rayel
lifted the lifeless body of his father, and bore it into the house.

CHAPTER VII

In accordance with my uncle's wish, which he had made known to Rayel, we
buried him the day following his death in the sunny courtyard where he
had spent the last days of his life. The funeral arrangements were made
as simple as possible, so as to exclude all except the functionaries
whose presence was absolutely necessary. A rector of the Church of
England read the service for the dead before the body was borne to its
grave by the undertaker. When this brief ceremony was over, and the
great gates were closed again upon our seclusion, Rayel said to me:

"I must talk more with you now, if you will let me. He said you would
help me after he was gone."

It seemed idle to assure him, who already knew my heart, of the
happiness it would give me to fulfill the pledge of friendship made to
my uncle.

"Do you expect to see him again?" I asked.

After a moment of the most serious reflection, he said:

"Oh, yes, I shall see him again--when I die, then I shall see him. He
has gone to the Great Father, who gives life, and who takes it away."

I found that Rayel, although entirely ignorant of the creeds and dogmas
prevailing among men, was profoundly religious, and that his simple
faith was built upon the deepest foundations. He evidently gave much
th