I placed the paper where my father’s hand could rest upon it, and sat down to my silent meal.
Presently, watching, as I ate, the weak restless movements of the hand upon the quilt, a thought occurred to me, which then and there I resolved to put into practice. It was evident that, unless through an unexpected renewal of strength, those dying fingers would never succeed in forming a legible word with the pencil they could barely hold. But they could make a sign of themselves and that little power I must seek to direct.
I hurried down to the kitchen and seized from the wall an ancient bone tablet that Peggy used for domestic memoranda. Scraping a little soot from the chimney I mixed it with water into a thick paste and spread a thin layer of the latter over the surface of the tablet. It dried almost immediately, and writing on it with the tip of my finger, I found that the soot came readily away, leaving the mark I had made stenciled white and clear under the upper coating.
Returning to my father, with this extemporized first principle and the saucer of black paste, I held the tablet before his dim, wandering eyes, and wrote on it with my finger, demonstrating the method. At first he hardly seemed to comprehend my meaning, but, after a repetition or two his glance concentrated and his forehead seemed to ripple into little wrinkles of intelligence. At that I smeared the surface of the bone afresh, waited a minute for it to dry, and placed it under his hand upon the bed, leaving him to evolve the method from his poor crippled inner consciousness.
But a few moments had elapsed when a small, low sound from the bed brought me to my father’s side.
He looked from me to the tablet, where it lay, and there was a strained imploring line between his eyes. Gently I took up the little black square and I saw that something was formed on it. With infinite toil, for it was only his left hand he could use, he had scratched on it a single, straggling word, and in the fading light I read it:
“Forgive.”
“Father!” I cried; “is that what you have been striving to say?”
He dragged up his unstricken arm slowly into an attitude as if the hand sought its fellow to join it in a prayer to me.
“Before God,” I said, “you wrong me to think I could say that word! What have I to forgive you for? My sins have been my own, and they have met with their just reward. Am I to forgive you for loving me? Dad—dad! I have known so little love that I can’t afford to wrong yours by a thought. Look! I will blot this out, that you may know my heart has nothing but tenderness in it for you!”