“We found him clinging to a sapling,” said one. “But he's about gone—poor fellow!”
Poor fellow, indeed! Mrs. Renfro felt the lumps rise in her throat as she gazed upon that wreck, and thought. Presently Herne opened his eyes—already filling with the death-mist—and his gaze fell upon her face.
“Alice,” he whispered, “my troubles—are over. This”—he tugged at something in his bosom with his uninjured arm, when some one drew forth his Bible, drenched and torn—“this saved me. I could have killed him—” he glanced at Renfro, who amid his pity now wondered. “I could—but—I saved you. And—now—Jesus—have mercy—”
These were his last words, for in another minute Herne the Hunter was a thing of the past, and a weeping woman bent over him. After that there was silence for a while. Then the wife said to her husband, while the others removed the dead man:
“It was his misfortune, not my fault, that he loved me. Has he not made amends?”
And the husband, with his hands clasped in hers, could find no other heart than to say:
“Aye—most nobly!”