eard there was diphtheria over beyond the mountain
and I would take a day or two to rest me and then I'd go over there and
help. I laughed a little to myself, and I see now it wasn't a very
pleasant kind of laugh, for I thought the people would begin to like me
again because I was free to do for them.

"And I did go to sleep, being, as I said, very tired, and how long I
slept I don't know. But suddenly I waked up, just as wide awake as I am
this minute, and I knew as well as I ever knew anything, that Billy
Jones was in the room. I didn't see him. I didn't hear him. I didn't
hear anything, outside or in. It was a very still night, and there
wasn't even the creaking of the branches against each other. But Billy
Jones was in the room. I wasn't afraid, but I felt queer. I had a kind
of prickly feeling all over me. The hair on my head moved somehow,
according to the feeling it gave me. Perhaps that was being afraid, only
I don't take it so. The reason I think differently is that I didn't want
it to stop. If Billy Jones was there, I didn't want him to go away. If
he had anything to say, I wanted to hear it. And I was as sure as ever I
was of anything in my life that there was something to say. If this was
the beginning of something that was going to happen, it was only the
beginning. There was more to come. And I wanted to know what. I lay
there as still almost as Billy's body in the next room. I was afraid of
missing something. If there was something for me to hear I'd got to keep
still to hear it. But I said that before. I have to keep saying it, it
took such hold of me. The fire hadn't wholly died down. I could tell by
that I hadn't been asleep long. But I didn't dare to get up and put on
another stick. I was afraid if I moved I might jar something and it
would break. And I couldn't have it break till the end--the end of my
knowing what it was.

"And now the boy must remember that what follows, if I live to write it,
is faithful and true. That is what the Bible says about things like
that: they are faithful and true. And mine are just as true. It seemed
to me as if the ceiling of the room raised up and the walls opened out
and the room was as if it was not. Whether I looked through it or
whether it was gone, I do not know. But I looked into a great space. And
it was dark and at one side of it there was a great light. And the light
was not angry, as a sunset looks when it flames and flares. It was
steady, and I knew it wa