THE next morning, Lord's Day, at eight o'clock exactly, the nurse of the ward came hastily to my sitting-room, which was some distance off, begging that I would at once pay a visit to Alexander. Very speedily I was in the ward. A death-like stillness pervaded it. Several patients and the two nurses were round the bed had sat on nine hours before, pressing Christ and salvation on the occupant thereof. As I drew near they scattered, giving me a view of Alexander's face. White as the sheet that came in contact with it, the truth was apparent: he was not faint, as some supposed, from loss of blood, but DEAD.
He had risen that morning as usual, was seated at the table eating his breakfast when, without the slightest warning, a torrent of blood flowed from his mouth (a large vessel in the lungs having given way), and, ere he could be placed in his bed, life ebbed away, and his pallid and lifeless corpse alone met my gaze, as, for the third time within nine hours, I stood by that bed at the foot of the ward.
That moment I shall never forget Gone, and where? Into eternal night, I feared. To myself I said, " Ah! poor Alexander, you will have time enough now to 'think about it,' when, alas it is too late to believe and receive it."
Oh, the horrors of a night without a morning! I fear, poor fellow, he entered it by the gaping doorway of procrastination.