Rayel shook his head incredulously, and sat for a long time looking out of the window in silence.
“And I will go with you then?” he asked suddenly turning toward me.
It was the first time he had ever asked me a question, for he could read my mind like an open book, and to him all questioning was unnecessary.
While we were sitting there, thinking over our plans, my uncle summoned us by rapping with his cane. Rayel turned pale, and, with a whispered ejaculation, hurried out of the room and ran down the path to his father, followed closely by myself. My uncle was breathing heavily.
“Count it,” said he, feebly extending his hand. Rayel counted 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.
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: