"Be you not well?" asked Martha, anxiously.
Her husband leant back in his chair, and pressed his hand over his eyes.
"It's not that, wife, it's not that," replied Michael, removing his hand. "It was those words—'twas the bidding us do this 'in remembrance of Me.' I couldn't abide the thought of having so long neglected the dear Saviour's dying wish, let alone it's being the King's command. You see," continued Michael, addressing himself to his grandson, "I have known what it was to receive a dying request, and to treasure it up, and keep it, as if 'twere a bit of my life. Your Granny knows the story well, but, maybe, you han't heard so much about it."
Then, after pushing back his chair from the table, and again passing his hand across his eyes, Michael Garth began his simple tale.
"I had as good and kind a mother as ever lived, and, I take it, never son loved mother more than I did. When I was a lad, not much older than you be, I sickened with the fever which was a-spreading all through the village. My mother she watched me day and night, and would scarce stir from my bedside till the doctor he said as how the worst was over.
"But the worst was not over," continued Michael with feeling, "for she had caught the fever from me, she had, and on the day when I first rose from my bed, my mother lay a-dying upon hers! I was just able to crawl to her side, to get her blessing, and to hear her last words. I half wished in my grief that the fever had taken us both away, so there would have been no sore parting for either. My mother drew from under her pillow my father's silver watch, which she had kept ever since she had lost him. She was so weak she scarcely could hold it, and her voice was so faint that I had to bend down close to catch her last words, 'Keep it for my sake;' they was the last words as ever she spoke. I could not answer, a lump was in my throat, but I vowed in my heart that I'd never part with that watch to my dying day!"
"And you never did!" exclaimed Martha. "So that there old watch is locked up safe in yon box at this moment."
"I treasured that watch, I wore it by day, I put it under my bolster by night, often and often did it bring my mother to my mind, it seemed like a bit of herself. If I was a-tempted to go wrong, the very sound of its ticking when I wound it up at bedtime seemed like a warning voice from her grave. Years passed on, and I married, and a family came—bless 'em—and after that great troubles. You mind that hard winter, wife, when I was ten weeks out of work, and we scarcely knew where to turn to get a crust to keep soul and body together!"
"I can never forget it," said Martha; "we lay down hungry, and we got up hungry, and were well-nigh driven to part with the bed beneath us for rent."
"I was well-nigh driven to part with something else," observed her husband. "Many and many's the time that I thought of my silver watch as the one thing that I could turn into money; but I al'ays shrank back from doing that, I counted it would be a'most like trampling over my mother's grave. One day I was pretty near desperate; there was the rent unpaid, and the little uns crying, and I started off for the town where the pawnbroker lived. When I came nigh the place, in sight of the three gilt balls, I pulled out my watch, it seemed to throb like a living thing in my hand. I stood stock still and looked on it, and all the deathbed scene came back upon me as fresh as if I had just left it, the pale face—the wistful eyes—the faint whisper, 'Keep it for my sake.'