“He’s got a bad enough road to go, uncle,” I said. “I don’t want to lay up more remorse for myself. We’ll cheer him on his way. Come, Mr. Sant!”
My uncle uttered what sounded like an oath. But he objected no further.
“In manus tuas, Domine, commendo spiritum suum!” I heard him mutter viciously; and I ran up, and shook his hand hard, and hurried out.
In the little garden we found Joshua. He understood without a word. He was very sombre; but quiet, and glad, by his glistening eyes, to see me well.
We hastened up the village street. News of our mission had got abroad; vague and speculative as yet, for Jacob had been loyal. But the people we passed looked at us covertly and curiously, scenting strange revelations in the air.
The ex-smuggler lived, was dying, in a little cottage up a squalid alley near the head of the village. It was a poor, dreary hovel, the mere lair of a beast, self-degraded, God-forsaken. His wretched wife, the real scapegoat of his sins, took us in to him.
“He’s dyin’ hard,” she said, in a thin fretful voice; “hard as a lord, wi’ the whole world to lose. He allers was above his station, was Jole. Lived on dreams, he did. I mind the time he promised me a kerridge; and now we’ll be bad set to find a hearse.”
He sat propped up under a frowzy patchwork quilt. A silhouette under broken glass was clutched in one of his hands. The whole man was sunk in upon his frame; his breath, always difficult to him to draw, laboured heavily; his eyes, in their livid halos, were quite unearthly. The woman went to him, and made some show of easing the coverlet on his chest.
“I was telling the gentlemen,” she said, shrilly, “that time was we was to have our kerridge, and now summut less than a hearse must serve.”
He nodded, and moved his ashy lips, and fingered the picture in his hand.