“Is the hurt bad, Governor?” he asked in a trembling voice.
The Governor smiled and held out a steady hand above the ragged patchwork quilt. His neat gray coat lay over him and as Dan caught the glitter and the collar he remembered the promotion after Seven Pines.
“Let me help you, General,” he implored. “What is it that we can do?”
“I have come to the end, my boy,” replied the Governor, his rich voice unshaken. “I have seen men struck like this before and I have lived twelve hours longer than the strongest of them. When I could go no farther I sent Hosea ahead to make things ready—and now I am keeping alive to hear from home. Give me water.”
Dan held the glass to his lips, and looking up, the Governor thanked him with his old warm glance that was so like Betty's. “There are some things that are worth fighting for,” said the older man as he fell back, “and the sight of home is one of them. It was a hard ride, but every stab of pain carried me nearer to Uplands—and there are poor fellows who endure worse things and yet die in a strange land among strangers.” He was silent a moment and then spoke slowly, smiling a little sadly.
“My memory has failed me,” he said, “and when I lay here last night and tried to recall the look of the lawn at home, I couldn't remember—I couldn't remember. Are there elms or maples at the front, Dan?”
“Maples, sir,” replied Dan, with the deference of a boy. “The long walk bordered by lilacs goes up from the road to the portico with the Doric columns—you remember that?”
“Yes, yes, go on.”
“The maples have grown thick upon the lawn and close beside the house there is the mimosa tree that your father set out on his twenty-first birthday.”
“The branches touch the library window. I had them trimmed last year that the shutters might swing back. What time is it, Dan?”