"I hope it will be a long while before I have to wear it," sighed Karl, perceiving how hopeless it was to change his brother's humour.
"I'd bet Foxwood with you that it will be before Christmas."
"Adam, is it right to speak in this way?"
"Need of change, I suppose. I have had a solemn night of it, old fellow: and I hardly know yet whether I was asleep or awake. It was somewhat of both, I expect: but I thought I was amidst the angels. I can see them now as they looked; a whole crowd of them gathered about my bed. And, Karlo, when a man begins to dream of angels, and not to be able to decide afterwards whether it be a dream or a shadowed reality, it is a pretty sure sign, I take it, that no great time will elapse before he is with them."
Before Karl left, Adam had talked himself into a doze. With his worn and haggard face turned to the wall, he slept as peacefully as a child. Karl stole away, and went into the greenhouse. Rose was there amid the plants; the sunlight shining on her beautiful hair turned it into threads of gold. She lifted her white face, with its sad expression.
"I knew you were with him, Karl, so I did not come in. Don't you think he looks very, very ill this morning."
"Yes, he certainly does. He is asleep now."
"Do you think there's hope, Karl?" she piteously asked--almost as if all hope had left herself.
"I don't know, Rose. Mr. Moore has not told me there is none."
"Perhaps it is that he will not say," she rejoined, resting her elbow on the green steps amid the plants, and her cheek on her hand. "I seem to see it, Karl; to see what is coming. Indeed, you might tell me the truth. I shall not feel it quite so much as I should had our circumstances been happier."
"I have told you as far as I know, Rose."
"There's my little baby gone: there's my husband going: all my treasures will be in the better world. I shall have nothing to do but live on for, and look forward to, the time when I may go to them. Six months ago, Karl, had I known Adam must die, I think the grief would have killed me. But the apprehension we have undergone the last few weeks--Adam's dread, and my awful fear for him--has gone a great way to reconcile me. I see--and I think he sees--that Death would not be the worst calamity. Better for him to be at rest than live on in that frightful peril night and day; each moment as it passes one of living agony, lest the next should bring the warders of Portland Island to retake him. No wonder it is wearing him out."