Poor Jack. He had borne manfully much heartache, but the dreadful thing that he had just heard was too much for even his iron will and nerves. He collapsed as if a dagger had pierced his heart, and would have fallen to the floor had he not gripped the bedstead when his legs gave way.
Chapman raised his head and gazed, with eyes red from weeping, at him who told the calamitous story of the events that had stricken him down. There was a dangerous glitter in the red eyes as Chapman sprung to John Dunlap’s assistance in reviving the senseless man.
When Jack recovered self-command sufficient to realize what was happening about him, he found that the physician, who had been summoned, had administered restoratives and stimulants, and that the patient had returned to consciousness; that the kind Doctor was trying to comfort the heartbroken brother of the sufferer even while obliged to admit that the end of life for James Dunlap was not far distant.
“Come and get in my bed, Jack,” came in a low and indistinct voice from the couch of the helpless patient. Captain Dunlap started in surprise, but old John Dunlap made a motion with his hand and said in a voice choking with emotion,
“He always so called me when we were boys,” and lying down by his brother he put his arms lovingly and protectingly around him.
Thus the two old men lay side by side as they had done years before in their cradle. The silence remained for a long time unbroken, save for the muffled sobs that came from those who watched and grieved in the chamber.
“How cold it is, Jack, come closer; I’m cold. I broke through the ice today and got wet but don’t tell mother, she will worry. Jack, don’t tell on me.” The words were whispered to his brother by the dying man.
“No, Jim, I’ll not tell, old fellow,” bravely answered John Dunlap, but a smothered sob shook his shoulders. He knew his brother’s mind was straying back into the days of their boyhood.
For what inscrutable cause does the mind of the most aged recur to scenes and associations of childhood when Death, the dread conqueror, draws near? Why does the most patriarchal prattle as though still at the mother knee in that last and saddest hour? Is it because mother, child, in purity approach nearest to that transcendent pellucidity that surrounds the throne of Him before whom all must appear? Does the nearness of the coming hour cast its shadow on the soul, causing it to return to the period of greatest innocence, and that love that is purest on earth?
“Jack, hold me, I am slipping, I am going, going, Jack.”