With a horrified groan, I pressed my hands over my eyes and
rushed back. My first glimpse of the Colonel's face showed me that the
end was at hand, but that fact only made more imperative my consuming
desire to see that curse removed, even though it were done with his
final breath. Drawing near his bedside, I leaned down, and waiting till
his eye wandered to my face, asked him if there was nothing he wished
amended before his strength failed. He understood me. We had not sat for
so long, face to face across the chasm of a hideous memory, without
knowing something of the workings of each other's mind. Glancing up at
his wife's portrait which ever faced him as he lay upon his pillow, his
mouth grew severe and he essayed to shake his head. I at once pointed to
the portrait.

"'What will you say to her when she meets you on the borders of heaven?'
I demanded with the courage of despair.' She will ask, 'Where is my
child?' And what will you reply?'

"The fingers that lay upon the coverlid moved spasmodically; he eyed me
with a steady deepening stare, awful to meet, fearful to remember. I
went on steadily; 'She has gone out of this house with your curse; tell
me that if she comes back, she may be greeted with your forgiveness.'
Still that awful stare which changed not. 'I have watched and waited for
her every day since her departure,' I whispered, 'and shall watch and
wait for her, every day until I die. Shall a stranger's love be greater
than a father's?' This time his lips twitched and the grey shadow
shifted, but it did not rise. 'I had sworn to do it,' I went on. 'When
you lay there at the top of the stairs, smitten down by your first
shock, I told her, come sickness, come health, I should keep a daily
vigil at that door of the house which your severity had not closed upon
her; and I have kept my word till now and shall keep it to the end. What
will you do for this miserable child of whose being you are the author?'

"With indescribable anxiety I paused and watched him, for his lips were
moving. 'Do for her?' he repeated.

"How awful is the voice of the dying! I shivered as I listened, but drew
near and nearer, that I might lose no word that came from his stony
lips.

"'She will not come,' gasped he, with an effort that raised him up in
bed, and deepened that horrible stare, 'but--'

"Who shall say what he might have uttered if Death's hand had delayed a
single instant, but the inexorable shadow fell, and he never