as her head pressed harder
and harder upon my arm now exerting all its strength to support her,
grew almost divine. But it vanished at my nephew Lemuel's.

"He was shearing sheep, and could give no time to company; and when,
late in the day, I drew rein at Janet's, and she said she was going to
have a dance and could not look after sick folk, the pallid lips failed
to return my despairing embrace; and in the terror which this brought me
I went down, in the gathering twilight, into the deep valley where
William raised his sheep and reckoned, day by day, the increase among
his pigs. Oh, the chill of that descent! Oh, the gloom of the gathering
shadows! As we neared the bottom and I heard a far-off voice shout out a
hoarse command, some instinct made me reach up for the last time and
bestow that faithful kiss, which was at once her consolation and my
prayer. My lips were cold with the terror of my soul, but they were not
so cold as the cheek they touched, and, shrieking in my misery and need,
I fell before William where he halted by the horse-trough and--He was
always a hard man, was William, and it was a shock to him, no doubt, to
see us standing in our anguish and necessity before him; but he raised
the whip in his hand and, when it fell, my arm fell with it and she
slipped from my grasp to the ground, and lay in a heap in the roadway.

"He was ashamed next minute and pointed to the house near-by. But I did
not carry her in, and she died in the roadway. Do you remember it,
Luke? Do you remember it, Lemuel?

"But it is not of this I complain at this hour, nor is it for this I ask
you to drink the toast I have prepared for you."

The looks, the writhings of old Luke and such others as I could now see
through the widening crack my hands unconsciously made in the doorway,
told me that the rack was at work in this room so lately given up to
revelry. Yet the mutterings, which from time to time came to my ears
from one sullen lip or another, did not rise into frightened imprecation
or even into any assertion of sorrow or contrition. It seemed as if some
suspense, common to all, held them speechless if not dumbly
apprehensive; and while the lawyer said nothing in recognition of this,
he could not have been quite blind to it, for he bestowed one curious
glance around the table before he proceeded with old Anthony's words.

Those words had now become short, sharp, and accusatory.

"My child lived; and what remained to me of h