I snatched up the tablet and smeared out the cruel word and placed the blank surface under his hand again. He was looking at me all the time with the same dim anguished expression, and now his head sunk back on the pillow and a tear rolled down his face.
Night came upon me sitting there, and presently, overcome by emotion and weariness, I fell over upon the foot of the bed and sunk into a profound sleep. For hours I lay unconscious and it was broad day in the room when I awoke with a sudden start.
Realizing in a moment how I had betrayed my vigil, I leaped to my feet with a curse at my selfishness and looked down upon my father. He was lying back, sunk in a wan exhausted sleep, and under its influence his features seemed to have somewhat resumed their normal expression.
But it appeared he had again been scrawling on the tablets, with the first of the dawn, probably; and these were the broken words thereon that stared whitely up at me:
“I murd Mored.”
CHAPTER LIII.
AN ATTEMPT AND A FAILURE.
For a minute or more I must have stood gazing down on the damning words, unmoving, breathless almost. Then I glanced at the quiet face on the pillow and back again to the tablet I held in my hand.
I am glad to know—proud, in the little pride I may call mine—that at that supreme moment I stood stanch; that I cried to myself: “It is a lie, born of his disease! He never did it!” That I dashed the tablet back upon the bed and that my one overwhelming thought was: “How may I defend this poor soul from himself?”
That he might die in peace with his conscience—that was the end of my desire. Yet how was I, knowing so little, to convince him? Disproof I had none, but only assurance of sympathy and a moral certainty that a nature so constituted could never lend itself to so horrible a deed.
In the midst of my confusion of thought a sudden idea woke in me and quickened into a resolve. I went swiftly out of the room, down the stairs, and walked in upon old Peggy mumbling her bread and milk in the kitchen. I was going out for awhile, I told her, and bade her listen for any sound upstairs that might betoken uneasiness on the part of the patient.