Death knell

“ At your years, Quentin, either were unnatural," said Askerne, kindly.
"My brave lad," said Monkton, putting an arm round him as an elder brother might have done, "have you really no fear of—of death?"
"To say that I have not," replied Quentin, with quivering lip, "would be to state that which is false; but I know death to be the ordinance of God—the fate of all mankind. It is but the end of the course of time—welcome only to such as are weary of their lives. I am not weary of mine, therefore I would indeed find it hard to die. ”

“ It would have been suicide to dive back into that maelstrom of death in an effort to catch him. Sick at heart, Kern saw him fall twisting toward the ground. He saw, too, how man after man of the swarm around him stiffened and dropped after Sam on limp wings as the mutant’s lethal gaze took his own escort of dead men around him to his death.
Then they plunged into the choking mists overhead, and no one had time to think of anything but his own breathing, his own urgent need to follow exactly in the wing-path of Kua’s bearers as she guided them through the fog. ”

“ But while his fellow-labourers are silent through sorrow, Blue Bill is speechless from another and different cause. They only hear that young Massr Clancy has been killed—murdered, as the report says—while he knows how, when, where, and by whom. The knowledge gives him double uneasiness; for while sorrowing as much, perhaps more than any, for Charles Clancy’s death, he has fears for his own life, with good reasons for having them. ”

“ From the barn doorway he watched the flutter of her cloak as she hurried down the path to the river.
CHAPTER XXI THE SHADOW OF DEATH
Kenny went back to the kitchen, hungry and depressed. To his fancy, as eager at times in its morbidity as in its lighter sparkle, the shadow of death seemed brooding over the farmhouse. This an hour later the weary little doctor confirmed. He had tired shadows around his eyes, that doctor; he seemed always bored to death at the proneness of mankind to ills and aches and babies; and his kind tired voice never lost its drawl no matter what the crisis. ”

“ When a man is dodging death and expecting treachery, his perceptions become acute. The king, with his eyes upon the young man's countenance, caught the change of expression.
He sprang at Kenkenes and seized his arms.
"Speak!" he cried violently. "Thou knowest; thou knowest!"
A sudden ebullition of rage and vengeance sent a tingling current through the young man's veins. The moment had come. In the eye of a cautious man, he had been called upon for a dangerous declaration. He had a mighty man to accuse, no proof and little evidence at his command, and a weakling was to decide between them. ”

“ While to Helen the paradox became clearer and clearer. "Death destroys a man: the idea of Death saves him." Behind the coffins and the skeletons that stay the vulgar mind lies something so immense that all that is great in us responds to it. Men of the world may recoil from the charnel-house that they will one day enter, but Love knows better. ”

“ Meanwhile the necromancer, trembling with fear, kept doing his best with mild and soft persuasions to dismiss them. Vincenzio Romoli,who quaked like an aspen leaf, looked after the perfumes. Though I was quite as frightened as the rest of them, I tried to show it less, and inspired them all with marvellous courage; but the truth is that I had given myself up for dead when I saw the terror of the necromancer. The boy had stuck his head between his knees, exclaiming: "This is how I will meet death, for we are certainly dead men." ”

“ I answered: "The sooner I escape from this earthly prison, the happier shall I be; especially as I am sure my soul is saved, and that I am going to an undeserved death. Christ, the glorious and divine, elects me to the company of His disciples and friends, who, like Himself, were condemned to die unjustly. I too am sentenced to an unjust death, and I thank God with humility for this sign of grace. Why does not the man come forward who has to pronounce my doom?" The guard replied: "He is too grieved for you, and sheds tears." ”

“ Who could possibly desire her death? She never appears to have made an enemy; her servants and dependents all say of her that she was proud, but generous and lavish as a queen.”
“It is true,” said Kenelm Eyrle.
“I have known strange cases in my life,” continued Sergeant Hewson, warming with his subject. “Strange and terrible. I have known murder committed by ladies whom the world considers good as they are fair——”
“Ladies!” interrupted Kenelm. “Ah! do not tell me that. Surely the gentle hand of woman was never red in a crime so deep as that.” ”

“ But in hell there is no escape through annihilation; suicide, the last [Pg 85] refuge of tyrannous and cowardly despair, is of none avail,
"And death once dead there's no more dying then."
What had to be endured I found must be endured, and that unto the uttermost, for in all horrid hell there was no nook or cranny into which I could creep to hide myself from the hideous spectres of the past. I remember that I rose up in my despair, and stretching vain hands to the impotent heavens, shrieked out as only one can shriek who is torn by hell-torture and despair. ”

“ I don't want the pathetic figure of Yvonne Kernogan and her father to remain as a picture of patient resignation in the hearts and minds of every other aristo in the land. I don't want it to excite pity or admiration. Death is nothing for such as they! they glory in it! they are proud to die. The guillotine is their final triumph! ”

“ It won’t do to go on; every step may be death.”
A pause of almost unspeakable horror followed his words; after the fall of the rock had revealed to them how frightful was the peril which they had escaped, all three of them for a moment felt paralysed in every limb, and after looking close into each other’s faces, blanched white by a deadly fear, Kenrick and Power sat down in an agony of despair.
“Don’t give way, you fellows,” said Walter, to whom they both seemed to look for help; “our only chance is to keep up our hope and spirits. ”

“ Kenkenes replied quietly; "but the messenger who knew its contents would suffer not disaster or death to stay him in carrying it to thee."
As if to delay the reading of it, the king dismissed Nechutes and signed Kenkenes to arise. Then he turned the scroll over and over in his hands, inspecting it.
"Age does not cool the fever of retaliation," he said thoughtfully, "and this ancient Jambres hath a grudge against me. Come," he exclaimed as if an idea had struck him, "do thou open it."
Kenkenes took the scroll thrust toward him, and ripped off the linen wrapping. ”

“ Already, however, his fears pointed to the palace of Har-hat as the prison of Rachel, and this faint inscription was corroboration. It appealed to him as villainy worthy of the fan-bearer. It was like his exquisite effrontery.
Kenkenes whirled away with an indescribable sound, rather like the snarl of an infuriated beast than an expression of a reasoning creature. Dashing down the sand, he plunged into the Nile and swam with superhuman speed for the Memphian shore.
He defied death as a maniac does. The river was a mile in width and teeming with crocodiles. ”

“ Kenwick answered slowly, "that it is one of the inevitable results of the war. It has caused a big upheaval in the spiritual as well as the economic world. And one of the things that it has brought to the surface is death. Of course death has always been with us but unless it came right into our own lives we have persistently ignored it, as we have ignored the industrial problems and immigration and a lot of other things. But during the last few years death has been rampant. Everybody has had to look at it from a greater or less distance. ”

“ “I am not one of your repentant sinners, Kenneth. I have lived my life—God, what a life!—and as I have lived I shall die, unflinching and unchanged. Dare one to presume that a few hours spent in whining prayers shall atone for years of reckless dissoluteness? 'Tis a doctrine of cravens, who, having lacked in life the strength to live as conscience bade them, lack in death the courage to stand by that life's deeds. I am no such traitor to myself. ”

“ Keller, and to combat on the spot the suspicion which he might ignorantly rouse in their minds. Still in the same agony of doubt, she now stood, with her eyes on the cell, trying to summon the resolution to judge for herself. One look at the dead woman, while the solitude in the room gave her the chance—one look might assure her of the livid pallor of death, or warn her of the terrible possibilities of awakening life. ”

“ When he was about to die he exclaimed: “Thou, O most wicked man, destroyest us out of this present life, but the King of the world [4] will raise up us who die for His laws, in the resurrection of eternal life.”
The third brother offered his hands and feet to be cut off, saying: “These I have from heaven, but for the law of God I now despise them, because I hope to receive them again from Him.” Some minutes before his death he declared aloud his willingness to die for God, as his brothers had already done. ”

“ Between the last date above given and the thirtieth day of July, Brother Kline preached ten funeral discourses, each of which was delivered on the day of burial. Paul uttered a great truth when he said: "It is appointed unto men once to die." But only once. If they die a second death, it is their fault. The death of the body is the only death ever appointed unto men. ”

“ Where was the plague? "Here—every where!" one voice of horror and dismay exclaimed, when in the pleasant days of a sunny May the Destroyer of man brooded again over the earth, forcing the spirit to leave its organic chrysalis, and to enter upon an untried life. With one mighty sweep of its potent weapon, all caution, all care, all prudence were levelled low: death sat at the tables of the great, stretched itself on the cottager's pallet, seized the dastard who fled, quelled the brave man who resisted: despondency entered every heart, sorrow dimmed every eye. ”

“ That’s why people persist in fabricating a future life. I’ll tell you one thing, George, that’ll comfort you: death’s only a terrible thing if it comes before you’re ready, and you’re only ready when you’re worn out. That was the terrible part of the war.” The leonine head turned with an effort that left him breathless. “Violet my dear, I bow humbly at the thought of boys like Jim who were killed before they had time to find the grasshopper a burden. ”

“ Curiosity and speculation are kept alive by the fact of the body not having been found. For it has not. Search has been made everywhere for miles around. Field and forest, creeks, ponds, swamp, and river, have all been traversed and interrogated, in vain. All have refused to surrender up the dead.
That Clancy is dead no one has a doubt. To say nothing of the blood spilt beside his abandoned hat and gun, with the other circumstances attendant, there is testimony of a moral nature, to many quite as convincing. ”

“ I have witnessed the death of hundreds of young men in their prime, but I know of none among them who died willingly. A young sapper of the name of Kellner, whose home was at Cologne, had his whole abdomen ripped open by a shell splinter. ”

“ And what if death should come? It would only be to 'leave all disappointment, care, and sorrow, and be at rest forever,' But no, I shall not die. I have borne illness, suffering, sorrow—everything that breaks the [Pg 165] heart, and snaps the frail threads of existence—yet here I am still, quite healthy, passably rosy, and willing to devote my strength to those who need it. I have been 'through the fire,' Captain Clendenon, and really," with a subdued smile, "I think I am fireproof." ”

“ He knows that Richard Darke has only been one of his band by the exigency of sinister circumstances; knows, also, of the other, and stronger lien that has kept Clancy’s assassin attached to their confederacy—his love for Helen Armstrong. Now that he has her—the sister too—why may he not have taken both off, intending henceforth to cut all connection with the prairie pirates? Bosley would be no bar. The subordinate might remain faithful, and to the death; still Quantrell could kill him. ”

“ He had observed Kuno Kohn and Lisel Liblichlein in their confidential conversation in the hidden recess. He had seen how they had gone off together. He tried to drink and eat away his grief, to no avail. After he had eaten and drunk for some time, he was insane. He sang: "Death is a serious matter... Death has no time for jokes... Death is an urgent need..." ”

“ Most marvelous of all, when her father died she herself enacted the rôle of ghost, the news of his death being conveyed to her supernaturally and her cry of anguish being supernaturally conveyed back to the room where his corpse lay, in Oberstenfeld, and where it was distinctly heard by the physician who had attended him in his last moments. After this crowning piece of testimony the good [Pg 137] Kerner felt that no doubt of her unheard of powers could remain in the most skeptical mind. ”

“ Can death ever be farcical? We know that the epithet is wholly inapposite in the present instance. But can death ever be farcical? I told you, I think, of Major Johnson, who, throwing hot coppers from the balcony of the Grand Hôtel in Paris at the crowd cheering Kruger, overbalanced himself, fell to the pavement and was killed. ”