Nearly all his parishioners who were of mature age when he was settled had been borne away by many a funeral : he had one congregation in the church and a more crowded one in the churchyard ; and , having wrought so late into the evening and done his work so well , it was now good Father Hooper 's turn to rest . Several persons were visible by the shaded candlelight in the death-chamber of the old clergyman . Natural connections he had none . But there was the decorously grave though unmoved physician , seeking only to mitigate the last pangs of the patient whom he could not save . There were the deacons and other eminently pious members of his church . There , also , was the Reverend Mr. Clark of Westbury , a young and zealous divine who had ridden in haste to pray by the bedside of the expiring minister . There was the nurse -- no hired handmaiden of Death , but one whose calm affection had endured thus long in secrecy , in solitude , amid the chill of age , and would not perish even at the dying-hour . Who but Elizabeth ! And there lay the hoary head of good Father Hooper upon the death-pillow with the black veil still swathed about his brow and reaching down over his face , so that each more difficult gasp of his faint breath caused it to stir . All through life that piece of crape had hung between him and the world ; it had separated him from cheerful brotherhood and woman 's love and kept him in that saddest of all prisons his own heart ; and still it lay upon his face , as if to deepen the gloom of his darksome chamber and shade him from the sunshine of eternity . For some time previous his mind had been confused , wavering doubtfully between the past and the present , and hovering forward , as it were , at intervals , into the indistinctness of the world to come . There had been feverish turns which tossed him from side to side and wore away what little strength he had . But in his most convulsive struggles and in the wildest vagaries of his intellect , when no other thought retained its sober influence , he still showed an awful solicitude lest the black veil should slip aside . Even if his bewildered soul could have forgotten , there was a faithful woman at his pillow who with averted eyes would have covered that aged face which she had last beheld in the comeliness of manhood . At length the death-stricken old man lay quietly in the torpor of mental and bodily exhaustion , with an imperceptible pulse and breath that grew fainter and fainter except when a long , deep and irregular inspiration seemed to prelude the flight of his spirit . The minister of Westbury approached the bedside . `` Venerable Father Hooper , '' said he , `` the moment of your release is at hand . Are you ready for the lifting of the veil that shuts in time from eternity ? '' Father Hooper at first replied merely by a feeble motion of his head ; then -- apprehensive , perhaps , that his meaning might be doubtful -- he exerted himself to speak . `` Yea , '' said he , in faint accents ; `` my soul hath a patient weariness until that veil be lifted . ''
`` And is it fitting , '' resumed the Reverend Mr. Clark , `` that a man so given to prayer , of such a blameless example , holy in deed and thought , so far as mortal judgment may pronounce , -- is it fitting XXXXX a father in the Church should leave a shadow on his memory that may seem to blacken a life so pure ?
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