“He is gone!” murmured Ross, bending his ashen face over the ashen face of the dead.
“He is gone!” cried the poor old servant, wringing his hands and sobbing aloud; “he is gone, and without taking the old man with him!” Then the faithful old creature cast himself upon his knees, and taking the pale hand of the dead between his ebony palms, lifted up his voice and wept. While the voice of his grief filled the room, while his faithful heart seemed pouring itself out in tears, Ross turned softly and stole from the room.
A few brief minutes the old negro gave to his sorrow. Then amid his tears he remembered the last words of the dead. He did but pause to close, with reverent hands, the eyes that still seemed regarding him with earnest command. He did but compose the lifeless limbs, and draw the sheet over those loved features, before he went down to obey the last behest of the dead. The poor old man went forth from the deathchamber, guided by the gray dawn. His tread was slow and mournful. You could scarcely hear him as he passed along, for it seemed to him that the faintest sound might disturb his master.
He reached the library; his hand was upon the latch; he turned it with a cautious regard to sound, not with premeditation, but because the death-scene he had witnessed made the least noise appear to him like sacrilege. But the door remained firm. It was evidently locked within, for through the keyhole streamed a faint light, and with the light came an indistinct sound of rustling papers and the cautious tread of a footstep. The old man bent his eye to the keyhole and looked in. Directly within the range of his vision stood Mr. Clark’s escritoir wide open, and by it was Ross searching among the papers in an ebony box, which the old man knew as the repository of his master’s most valuable documents. Ross took from this box a voluminous parcel, thrust it in his bosom, and carefully locking the escritoir, held up the light and looked timidly around as if fearful of the very silence. Then, with a quick, noiseless tread, he passed across the room. His face was deathly pale, and the old negro saw that the lamp shook and swaled in his hand. There was a fireplace in the room, but the door commanded no view of it, and the old man strained his sight in vain to secure further knowledge of what was passing within the library. But if his eye was baffled his ear remained keen, and that was directly startled by the sharp rustle of papers apparently torn apart in haste; then the whole room was filled with a glare of light. There was a sudden and faint crackle as of some hastily kindled flame passing up the chimney. Then all was dark and hushed once more. The lamp seemed extinguished; a little smoke, a faint smell of burnt paper, and that was all the poor old negro ever saw of his master’s will.
The old man went back to the chamber, knowing too well that his mission was at an end. He knelt down by that death-couch trembling like a culprit, and heart-sick from a consciousness of his own impotence. “Oh, master, master! forgive me—forgive me!” cried the gray-headed old servant, bending his wrinkled forehead to the hands he had clasped upon the death-couch. “Forgive me that I stayed to cry when I should have obeyed the last order you can ever give the old man. I have seen, I have heard—but who will believe me, master? Am I not a slave?”
“A slave? Yes; go hence, and forever!” cried a stern voice in the room; “you who have no more discretion than thus to talk with the dead.”
The old man arose and stood up; his keen eyes dwelt firmly upon Ross, and with his right hand he drew the covering from the dead. There was something noble in the look and attitude of that old gray-headed negro as he confronted the false friend, the household traitor, who might yet have almost the power of life and death over him.
“He is my master; I will not leave him,” said the old man firmly. “You may whip me, you may kill me, but I will never leave him till he is buried. I rocked him in his cradle, I will lay him in his grave. Then sell me, if you like; no matter what becomes of the old man when his master is in the grave.” And turning away with a look of unutterable woe, the old servant cast himself by the death-couch, crying out, “My master! oh, my master!”
A few weeks after, the old man was sold and sent away to a far-off plantation, for he was a part of the property which Daniel Clark had left, and according to the old will, the only one ever found, Ross was the executor of the estate, and had a right to sell the poor old man.