On the edge of a pond stood two youths of some fifteen and thirteen years. They had divested themselves of their upper garments--thick warm tunics--and gazed into the water, here deep, dark, and slimy. There was a look of fixed resolution, combined with hopeless despair, in their faces, which marked the would-be suicides.
They raised their pale faces, their eyes swollen with tears, to heaven.
"O God," said the elder one, "and ye, ye Saints--if Saints there be--take the life I can bear no longer: better trust to your mercies than those of man--better Purgatory, nay, Hell, than earth. Come, Richard, the rope!"
The younger one was pale as death, but as resolved as the elder. He took up a rope, which he had thrown upon the grass, and gave it mechanically, with hands that yet trembled, to his brother.
"Let us commend ourselves to God; He will not be hard upon us, if He is as good as the Chaplain says--He knows it all."
And they wound the rope around them, so as to bind both together.
"We shall not be able to change our minds, even if the water be cold, and drowning hard."
The younger shivered, but did not falter in his resolution. What mental suffering he must have gone through; for the young naturally cling to life.
But the dread secret was all too visible.
From the younger boy two fingers had fallen off--rotted away with the disease. The elder had a covering over the cheek, a patch, for the leprosy had eaten through it. There was none of the spring and gladness of childhood or youth in either; they carried the tokens of decay with them. They had the sentence of physical death in themselves.
Now they stood tottering on the brink. The wind sighed hoarsely around them; a raven gave an ominous croak-croak, and flew flapping in the air. One moment--and they leapt together.
No; one had seen them, and had guessed their intent, and now arrived panting and breathless on the brink, with a long rope, terminated by a large iron hook, in his hand. Behind him came a second individual in a black cassock, but he had girded up his loins to run the better.
The man threw the rope just as the bodies rose to the surface--it missed and they disappeared once more. He watched--a moment of suspense--again they rose; he threw once more. Would the hook catch? Yes; it is entangled in the cord with which they have bound themselves, and they are saved! It is an easy task now to draw them to the land.