Not long after the lad had lain down, a
dream-like spell came over him. His pain was gone. He forgot that he was
cold. He was not hungry any more. A sweet sense of rest was diffused
through his tired limbs. And smiling and soothed he lay, while the storm
beat upon him. Was this death? For we know that in this merciful shape
death sometimes comes to the sufferer.
Fessenden's afterwards said that he had "one of his fits." He was
subject to such. When men reviled and denied him, then came the
angels,--or he imagined they came. They walked by his side, and talked
with him; and often, all a summer's afternoon, he could be heard
conversing in the fields, as with familiar friends, when only himself
was visible, and his voice alone was heard in the silence. This was, in
fact, one of those idiosyncrasies which had earned him his shameful
name.
In the trance of that night, lying cold upon the ground, he beheld his
ghostly visitors. They came and stood around him, a shining company, and
looked upon him with countenances of fair women and good men. Their
apparel was not unlike that of mortals.
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