Dutifully he turned to take that last farewell. But now that he had the martyred nurse at his side, he determined to endure the parting manfully. He knelt again, and tried to smile at the face smiling back at him from the pillow. He tried to speak, too, but his lips seemed stiff, for some reason, and his tongue would not obey. But he kept his bright head up.
He heard a whisper—Father Pat was commending this scout he loved to the mercy of a higher power. Next, he felt himself lifted gently and guided backward from the bed. He did not want to go. He wanted to keep on seeing, seeing that dear face, to hold on longer to that weak hand. "Oh, don't—don't take me!" he pleaded.
The dying eyes followed, oh, how affectionately, the small, khaki-clad figure. "God's—own—child!" breathed the priest, and there was tender pride in the faint tones. "God's—blessed—lad!"
"Father!"
Then the folds of the portières brushed Johnnie's shoulders, and fell between his eyes and the wide, white bed.
He had taken his last look.
He was nearly home when he discovered the letter—a thick letter in a long envelope. It was in his hand, though he could not remember how it came to be there. But it was undoubtedly his, for both sides of it bore his name in Father Pat's own handwriting: John Blake.
He did not open it. He could not read it just yet. Thrusting it into a coat pocket, he stumbled on. Had he complained and cried just because Cis was to live in another part of this same city? Had he actually thought the loss of a suit and some books enough to feel bad and bitter about? Was it he who had said, after Cis went, that nothing worse could happen?
Ah, how small, how trivial, all other troubles seemed as compared to this new, strange, terrible thing—Death! And how little, before this, he had known of genuine grief!
