"Thar hain't but jist only a flicker of pulse-beat left," he declared. "Mebby he mout live through hit—but ef he does hit'll p'int-blank astonish me."
CHAPTER X
Through the rest of that night Old Jase lay on a pallet spread before the fire, rising at intervals out of a deathlike slumber to slip his single suspender strap over his bent shoulder, turn up the lantern, and inspect his patient's condition.
On none of these occasions did he find the girl, who spent that night in a straight-backed chair at the bedside, asleep. Always she was sitting there with eyes wide and brimming with suffering and fear, and a wakeful, troubled heart into which love had flashed like a meteor and which it threatened, now, to sear like a lightning bolt. It seemed to her that life had gone aimlessly, uneventfully on until without warning or preparation it had burst into a glory of discovery and in the same breath into a chaos of destruction.
"Kain't ye give me no encouragement yit, Uncle Jase?" she whispered once when he came to the bedside, with a convulsive catching at her throat, though her eyes were dry and hot, and the old man, too ruggedly honest to soften the edge of fact with evasion, shook his head.
"I hain't got no power ter say yit—afore I sees how he wakes up termorrer," he admitted. "Why don't ye lay down, leetle gal? I'll summons ye ef airy need arises."
But the girl shook her head and later the old man, stirring on his pallet, heard her praying in an almost argumentative tone of supplication:
"Ye sees, Almighty God, hit don't call for no master big miracle ter save him ... an' Ye've done fotched ther dead back ter life afore now."