ley. Through the long night she knelt at Crailey's
side, his hand always pressed to her breast or cheek, her eyes always
upward, and her lips moving with her prayers, not for Crailey to be
spared, but that the Father would take good care of him in heaven till
she came. "I had already given him up," she said to Tom, meekly, in a
small voice. "I knew it was to come, and perhaps this way is better than
that--I thought it would be far away from me. Now I can be with him, and
perhaps I shall have him a little longer, for he was to have gone away
before noon."

The morning sun rose upon a fair world, gay with bird-chatterings from
the big trees of the Carewe place, and pleasant with the odors of Miss
Betty's garden, and Crailey, lying upon the bed of the man who had shot
him, hearkened and smiled good-by to the summer he loved; and, when the
day broke, asked that the bed be moved so that he might lie close by the
window. It was Tom who had borne him to that room. "I have carried him
before this," he said, waving the others aside.

Not long after sunrise, when the bed had been moved near the window,
Crailey begged Fanchon to bring him a miniature of his mother which he
had given her, and urged her to go for it herself; he wanted no hands
but hers to touch it, he said. And when she had gone he asked to be left
alone with Tom.

"Give me your hand, Tom," he said, faintly. "I'd like to keep hold of
it a minute or so. I couldn't have said that yesterday, could I, without
causing us both horrible embarrassment? But I fancy I can now, because
I'm done for. That's too bad, isn't it? I'm very young, after all.
Do you remember what poor Andre Chenier said as he went up to be
guillotined?--' There were things in this head of mine!' But I want to
tell you what's been the matter with me. It was just my being a bad sort
of poet. I suppose that I've never loved anyone; yet I've cared more
deeply than other men for every lovely thing I ever saw, and there's so
little that hasn't loveliness in it. I'd be ashamed not to have cared
for the beauty in all the women I've made love to--but about this
one--the most beautiful of all--I--------"

"She will understand!" said Tom, quickly.

"She will--yes--she's wise and good. If Fanchon knew, there wouldn't
be even a memory left to her--and I don't think she'd live. And do you
know, I believe I've done a favor for Miss Betty in getting myself shot;
Carewe will never come back. Tom, was ever a man's