A glance at his patient told him that this was the beginning of the end;
still, faithful to his principle of never abandoning hope till the heart
of the sufferer had ceased to beat, he raised the senseless man, heedless
of Orion, who was on his knees by his father's pillow, signed to the
deaconess in attendance, an experienced nurse, and laid cool, wet cloths
on the head and neck of the sufferer, who was stricken with apoplexy.
Then he bled him.

Presently the Mukaukas wearily opened his eyes, turned uneasily from side
to side, and recognizing his kneeling son and his wife, bathed in tears,
he murmured, almost inarticulately, for his paralyzed tongue no longer
did his will: "Two pillules, Philip!"

The physician unhesitatingly acceded to the request of the dying man, who
again closed his eyes; but only to reopen them, and to say, with the same
difficulty, but with perfect consciousness: "The end is at hand! The
blessing of the Church--Orion, the Bishop."

The young man hastened out of the room to fetch the prelate, who was
waiting in the viridarium with two deacons, an exorcist, and a sacristan
bearing the sacred vessels.

The governor listened in devout composure to the service of the last
sacrament, looked on at the ceremonies performed by the exorcist as, with
waving of hands and pious ejaculations he banned the evil spirits and
cast out from the dying man the devil that might have part in him; but
he could no longer swallow the bread which, in the Jacobite rite, was
administered soaked in the wine. Orion took the holy elements for him,
and the dying man, with a smile, murmured to his son: