arm, and waved aside the bandages. "I do not need them," said he, in a
collected voice. "I am better now. I and that pleasant light understand
one another, and I believe all it tells me. Pooh, pooh, I do not rave."
He looked so smilingly and so kindly into her face, that the poor woman,
who loved him as her own son, fairly burst into tears. He drew her
towards him, and kissed her forehead.

"Peace, old fool," said he, fondly. "You shall tell anglers hereafter
how John Burley came to fish for the one-eyed perch which he never
caught; and how, when he gave it up at the last, his baits all gone, and
the line broken amongst the weeds, you comforted the baffled man. There
are many good fellows yet in the world who will like to know that poor
Burley did not die on a dunghill. Kiss me. Come, boy, you too. Now,
God bless you, I should like to sleep." His cheeks were wet with the
tears of both his listeners, and there was a moisture in his own eyes,
which, nevertheless, beamed bright through the moisture.

He laid himself down again, and the old woman would have withdrawn the
light. He moved uneasily. "Not that," he murmured,--"light to the
last!" and putting forth his wan hand, he drew aside the curtain so that
the light might fall full on his face.

[Every one remembers that Goethe's last words are said to have been,
"More Light;" and perhaps what has occurred in the text may be
supposed a plagiarism from those words. But, in fact, nothing is
more common than the craving and demand for light a little before
death. Let any consult his own sad experience in the last moments
of those whose gradual close he has watchaed and tended. What more
frequent than a prayer to open the shutters and let in the sun?
What complaint more repeated and more touching than "that it is