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For a moment, even their ears were deaf to the muffled tumult outside the door, their senses dulled to every other thing in this world save the incredible hoard there in the golden pits before them. Pain, exhaustion, defeat ceased to be, for the Legionaries. Ruin and the shadow of Azraël's wing departed from their minds.
And some such fate is in his look," he added, after gazing fixedly upon the wounded man; "for though his wound may be cured, yet Azrael's seal is on the wretch's brow." "Nevertheless," said Richard, "I pray you do for him what you may, that he may at least have time for confession. Slay not soul and body!
He saw the little room where he would lie, his bed in one corner; he saw Isabel beside the bed; he saw himself, white, gasping, convulsed, upon it the shadows of the doctor and the priest were upon the wall he heard his own quick sobbing breath, he put out his finger and touched his own forehead wet with the death-dew he tasted and smelt the faint sickly atmosphere that hangs about a death chamber; and he watched the grey shadow of Azrael's wing creep across his face.
A startled night-fowl fluttered uncannily over his head and he crouched almost to his saddle-bow with terror. The flutter of Azrael's wings seemed very close! An hour later, as Douglass emerged from the bunkhouse, old Abigail hesitatingly accosted him. "Yuah to come up to thu house, Ken, right way! Now don' yuh be foolish, boy; remember she's only a gel an' young at that!"
I noticed that in less than a minute afterward his corpse had all the stern rigidity of stone. His brow was of the coldness of ice. Thus, ordinarily, should it have appeared, only after long pressure from Azrael's hand. Had the sleep-waker, indeed, during the latter portion of his discourse, been addressing me from out the region of the shadows?
No one answered. They all stood peering down at him, their faces tense, wounded, dirty; their eyes gleaming strangely; the shadow of Azraël's wing already enfolding them. Then, a few detached themselves from the little group and wandered off into the gloom, away from the pits. Leclair muttered: "I prefer loading my automatic, to loading my pockets! Odd, the major is, eh? Ah well,
Thereupon came three days' struggle with Azrael's pale shape before the blackwater gave place to the natural colour again, or until the secreting mechanism gave up the contest altogether and the Destroying Angel settled firmly on his prey. At first, if there was no vomiting, it was easy to ply the hourly drinks of tea and water and medicine.
But there was no rescue for me, that I knew; so I tried to hide my grief under the semblance of exultation. Tell her to forgive me for the sake of the tears I have shed in secret over this hated betrothal. How often have I called upon death to liberate me! and yet, now that the dark shadow of Azrael's icy wing is upon me, I fear to die."
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