At last matters reached a climax. It was late in March; Albert was much worse, and even the doctor looked solemn. "He won\'t last till the summer," he[Pg 367] said in answer to one of Pete\'s questions, and unluckily the sick man heard him.

When Pete went back into the room he found him struggling under the bedclothes, the sweat trickling down his face.

"Pete!" he cried chokingly—"I won\'t die!—I won\'t die!"

"And you w?an\'t, nuther," said Pete, soothing him.

"But I heard what the doctor said to you."

Pete was at a loss. He could lie if the lie were not too constructive, but in a case like this he was done for.

"Well, d?an\'t you fret, nohow," he murmured tenderly.

But it was no good telling Albert not to fret. He threw himself from side to side in the bed, moaned, and almost raved. For months now he had known that he must die soon, but somehow the idea had not really come home to him till this moment. He would not let Pete leave him, though there was a load of mangolds to be brought in; he clung to his brother\'s hand like a child, and babbled of strange sins.

"I\'ve been so wicked—I daren\'t die. I\'ve been the lowest scum. I\'m lost. Pete, I\'m damned—I shall go to hell."

Albert had been known openly to scoff at hell, whereas Pete had never thought much about it. Now it confronted them both under a new aspect—the scoffer trembled and the thoughtless was preoccupied.

"D?an\'t fret," reiterated poor Pete, desperate under the fresh complication of theology, "I reckon you\'re not bad enough to go to hell, surelye."

"But I\'m the worst—the worst that ever was. I\'m scum, I\'m dirt"—and out poured more of the turbid stream, till Pete sickened.

"If I could only see a parson," sobbed Albert at last.

"A parson?"

"Yes—maybe he could comfort me. Oh, I know[Pg 368] I\'ve mocked \'em and scoffed \'em all my life, but I reckon they could do summat for me now."

In his weakness he had gone back not only to the religious terrors of his youth, but to the Sussex dialect he had long forgotten.

Pete scarcely knew what to do. He had become used to his brother\'s gradual disintegration, but this utter collapse was terrifying. He offered his own ministrations.

"You\'ve told me a dunnamany things, and you can tell me as many more as you justabout like"—touching the climax of self-sacrifice.

But Albert\'s weak mind clung to its first idea with scared tenacity. He was still raving about it when Pete came in from his work that evening.

"I want a parson," he moaned, throwing himself about the bed, and his terrors seemed to grow upon him as the darkness grew.

Neither of them slept that night. Albert was half delirious, and obsessed by the thought of hell. The room looked out on Boarzell, and he became convinced that the swart, tufted mass outlined against the sprinkled stars was hell, the country of the lost. He pictured himself wandering over and over it in torment. He said he saw fire on it, scaring the superstitious Pete out of his life.
"On the great Moor of the lost
Wander all the proud and dead—
Those who brothers\' blood have shed,
Those who brothers\' love have crossed."

He broke into his own verse, pouring it out deliriously:
"There\'s the shuddering ghost of me
Lips all black with fire and brine,
Chained between the libertine
And the fasting Pharisee."

Then he became obsessed by the idea that he was out on the Moor, wandering on it, and bound to it. The[Pg 369] earth was red-hot under his feet, and he picked them up off the bed like a cat on hot bricks, till Pete began to laugh inanely. He saw round him all the places he had known as a child, and called out for them, because he longed to escape to them from the burning Moor—"Castweasel! Castweasel!... Ramstile!... Ellenwhorne...."

It was strange to hear a man calling out the names of places in his fever as other men might call the names of people.

It was all a return to Albert\'s childhood. In spite of fifteen years in London, of a man\'s work and a man\'s love and a man\'s faith, he had gone back completely to the work and love and faith of his childhood. Odiam had swallowed him up, it had swallowed him up completely, his very hell was bounded by it. He spoke with a Sussex accent; he forgot the names of the women he had loved, and cried instead the names of places, and he forgot that he did not believe in hell, but thought of it as Boarzell Moor punctured by queer singing flames.

Pete lay and listened shuddering, waiting with sick desire for the kindling of the dawn and the whiteness that moved among the trees. At last they came, the sky bloomed, and the orchard flickered against it, stirred by a soundless wind. The poor fellow sat up in bed, all troubled and muddled by things that had never touched him before. He stretched himself and yawned from force of habit, for he was not in the least sleepy, then he began to dress.

"What is it?" mumbled Albert, himself again for a moment.

"............