The Meeting, however, was longer than usual that evening. After some moments of silence, Edmund stood up and said that he wished the Lord's forgiveness for what he was about to say, that he knew that the agitation he was in was unworthy and childlike, but something of great magnitude had begun to trouble him and that was the loneliness of Quakers.

He paused for a moment. No one asked him any question, but waited in silence for what he would say next. Then he took out of his pocket a crumpled piece of parchment and read some words as follows: "The Lord showed me, so that I did see clearly, that he did not dwell in temples which men had commanded and set up, but in people's hearts; for both Stephen and the Apostle Paul bore testimony that he did not dwell in temples made with hands, not even in that which he had once commanded to be built, since he put an end to it; but that his people were his temple, and he dwelt in them."

After this and in some distress, so that his rodent's eyes began to brim with tears, he said: "It has come to me, not from the Lord, but in some very fearful dreams I have had, that for every other kind and condition of worship there is some steeplehouse or temple or shrine or actual place where the faithful can go in, as if going to God's house like a visitor and where, outside of himself, he can feel the presence of God, his host. But for the Quaker there is no such place and if- as I have felt in these dreams of mine – he has some sudden perception that God is not there within him any more, where shall he go to find Him? He cannot go to God's house, for what he is is God's house! So what shall he do? Please tell me my good Friends, how shall he overcome his isolation and his loneliness?"

Edmund then sat down and blew his nose and as he fumbled for his handkerchief, his piece of parchment fell to the floor and for some reason this letting go of a thing that was precious to him, more than his anxiety or the words he had spoken, made me feel a great kinship with him and I would have stood up and tried to answer his question if I had had any notion of what the answer might be.

Some more silence lay on us then, but it was broken after a few minutes by Ambrose who reminded Edmund that Fox had warned us not to rely upon dreams and had said "except you can distinguish between dream and dream, you will mash or confound all together." And so a discussion of dreams began which lasted some while: how there are three sorts of dreams, one kind being caused by the business of the day and another being the whisperings of Satan and a third kind being true conversations between God and man.

Because I am still plagued with dreams of my past, with dreams of Celia in fact and of course of the King, I began privately to wonder in which category these dreams fell and so lost the thread of the meeting for a while. When I once more gave it my attention, I saw that it had become very passionate with, not only Edmund crying, but Hannah also, and Eleanor kneeling and taking up her Bible and declaring to us all that to enter the Book was like entering God's house and to begin to read from the Apostles was to feel a welcoming hand taking us in and guiding us and offering us nourishment "as we would offer cakes or broth to a visiting Friend."

This reminder to Edmund that if God mysteriously went missing from him, he could start to find him again in the Scriptures seemed to cheer and comfort him somewhat. I thought that the Meeting might end then, but it was Eleanor's request that we should spend five or ten minutes each seeking out some verse of the Gospels that was and always might be of particular comfort to us. And so we each went to fetch our own Bibles and then sat round in our semi-circle and made little readings from Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. All the Quakers, including Edmund, found passages most appropriate to what had happened during the Meeting about Jesus loving especially the poor and the childlike and saying, "Come unto me all ye that are heavy laden" and, "Suffer the little children" and so forth. But when it came to my turn, I chose the verse from Luke, Chapter Two, which describes the mortal fear of some common shepherds at the sight of God's messenger angel: "And lo, the Angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them, and they were sore afraid…"

I do not really know why I chose it, except that I seem to have known it by heart all my life and that I wanted to say to Edmund that God surely frightens us and makes us feel lonely just as often as he comforts us. Such fear, as in the case of the shepherds, may be a prelude to a revelation of great importance, but then again it may not be. In my own case, it is usually fear of suffering and death and a prelude to nothing at all.

I bade goodnight to all the Keepers. I went to my linen cupboard and lit my lamp and I took this with me to Pearce's room, so that we had two lamps by which to work. I also took with me my surgical instruments, cleaned meticulously these days, with their silver handles polished.

As Pearce sat down on his narrow bed, I said: "I'll wager you have caught a summer chill and this is all."

"No," said Pearce, "I have had chills before and this is not one."

"Well, let us see…"

I began by taking up a tongue depressor and looking down Pearce's throat, which did not appear inflamed though I noted that his tongue was a little swollen and coated and that his breath was foul. I then examined his neck for swellings and found none. Then, guided by his hand, I put my hand on that part of his head that felt cold to him and through his thinning hair felt it to be moist, as if there was a sweating there.

This done, I asked him to take off his coat and shirt and to lie down on his bed, so that I could listen to his heartbeat and his breathing.

While he undressed, I made notes about the strange moistness of his head, the cause of which I could not at first fathom. Then I looked up.

Pearce stood before me, folding his shirt into a bundle, wearing only his frayed black breeches and stockings. I thought back to the last time I had seen his arms and chest unclothed, which was during my vigil at his bedside in the Olive Room at Bidnold. He had been as thin then as he always was as a young man, but now the change in his appearance was distressing beyond words to behold, for he was like a veritable skeleton, with his chest quite concave and every rib visible to me, seeming to have no covering of soft warm flesh on him at all, rather his bones appearing held together by his white skin.

"Pearce…" I stammered, forgetting in my shock at the sight of him, his constant entreaty to me to call him John.

"Yes," he said, "I know. I am grown a little thin."

"A little!" I blurted out. "What has happened to you? Have you been fasting?"

"No, I eat what is put before me. I do not know how this weight has been lost."

"Lie down!" I snapped.

Obediently, Pearce set aside his bundle and lay on his back on his bed. I brought the two lamps as near to him as I could and looked down at him and, truly, I wanted to cuff him about his head for allowing his body, invisible to us all inside his baggy clothes, to waste away to this degree.

I took up his wrist and felt his pulse and was relieved to find it quite strong. Then I bent over him and put my head on his chest and heard his heartbeat against my ear.

"It is the lung you should be listening to," said Pearce.

"I know," I said crossly. "Inhale deeply and exhale as slowly as you can."

The intake of breath was not smooth. It had a kind of spasm to it, as if there was a sobbing in the body.

"Inhale again and keep on with slow breaths until I tell you to stop," I instructed.

I listened for several minutes, moving my listening position a little after every second breath, then I told Pearce to turn over and I put my ear to his back, which is a most wretched part of the man, being very scabby with pimples, and all of what I heard made me afraid, for I was in no doubt that the lungs were in distress, having in them a quantity of mucus or phlegm which, if it is not got out, will in time fill all the lung tissue and bring the sufferer to a cruel death like a slow drowning.