" And, unable to endure the blow, he fainted away.
I cannot dwell on the miserable days that followed, when the very sun
in heaven seemed dark to poor Eric's wounded and crushed spirit. He
hardly knew how they went by. And when they buried Vernon in the little
green churchyard by Russell's side, and the patter of the earth upon the
coffin--that most terrible of all sounds--struck his ear, the iron
entered into his soul, and he had but one wish as he turned away from
the open grave, and that was, soon to lie beside his beloved little
brother and to be at rest.
CHAPTER X
THE LAST TEMPTATION
[Greek: 'Ae d' Atae sthenazae te chai 'aztipos sunecha pasas
Pollou 'upechpzotheei, phthaneei d' de te pasan ep' aiach
Blaptous' anthxopous.] Hom Il. ix. 505.
Time, the great good angel, Time, the merciful healer, assuaged the
violence of Eric's grief, which seemed likely to settle down into a
sober sadness. At first his letters to his parents and to Fairholm were
almost unintelligible in their fierce abandonment of sorrow; but they
grew calmer in time,--and while none of his school-fellows ever ventured
in his presence to allude to Vernon, because of the emotion which the
slightest mention of him excited, yet he rarely wrote any letters to his
relations in which he did not refer to his brother's death, in language
which grew at length both manly and resigned.
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