There, there he lay, the Mark Carter that had started with life so
fair, friends, prospects, so proud that he was a man, that he could
conquer and be brave--so blest with opening life, and heaven's high
call! And then--in one day--he had sinned and lost it all, and there he
lay, a white upturned face. That was himself, lying there with face
illumined by the fire, and men would call him dead! But he would not be
dead! He would be living on with that inward fire, gnawing at his
vitals, telling him continually what he might have been, and showing
him what high heaven was that he had had, and lost. He saw it now. He
had deliberately thrown away that heaven that had been his. He saw that
hell was hell because he made it so, it was not God that put him there,
but he had chosen there to go. And still the fire burned on and
scorched his poor soul back into the body to be tortured more. The long
weeks upon that bed seemed like an infinite space of burning rosy, oily
flames poured upward from a lake of fire, down through which he had
been falling in constant and increasing agony.
And now at last he seemed to be flung upon this peaceful shore where
things were cool and soothing for a brief respite, that he might look
off at where he had been floating on that molten lake of fire, and
understand it all before he was flung back. And it was all so very
real. With his eyes still closed he could hear the rushing of the
flames that still seemed ascending in columns out a little way from
shore, he could see through his eyelids the rosy hue of livid waters--
of course it was all a hallucination, and he was coming to himself, but
he had a feeling that when he was fully awake it would be even more
terrible than now. Two grim figures, Remorse and Despair, seemed
waiting at either hand above his bed to companion him again when he
could get more strength to recognize them. And so he lay thus between
life and death, and faced what he had done. Hours and hours he faced
it, when they knew not if he was conscious yet, going over and over
again those sins which he knew had been the beginning of all his walk
away from Hope. On through the night and into the next morning he lay
thus, sometimes drowsing, but most of the time alert and silent.
It was a bright and sparkling morning. There was a tang of winter in
the air. The leaves were gone from the apple trees at the window and
the bare branches tapped against the water spout like children playing
with a rattle. A dog barked joyously, and a boy on the street shouted
out to another--Oh, to be a boy once more! And suddenly Mark
knew Billy was sitting there. He opened his eyes and smiled: There were
bandages around his face, but he smiled stiffly, and Billy knew he was
smiling.