"You must stay and see it through," said Nap. "I can't win out without you."
"Ah!" A long sigh came pantingly with the word. "That so, Boney? Guess
I'm—a selfish brute—always was—always was."
A choked sob came through the stillness. Bertie suddenly covered his face. Mrs. Errol put her arm round him as one who comforted a child.
"Is that—someone—crying?" gasped Lucas.
"It's that ass Bertie," answered Nap, without stirring so much as an eyelid.
"Bertie? Poor old chap! Tell him he mustn't. Tell him—I'll hang on—a little longer—God willing; but only a little longer, Boney, only—a little—longer."
There was pleading in the voice, the pleading of a man unutterably tired and longing to be at rest.
Anne, standing apart, was cut to the heart with the pathos of it. But Nap did not seem to feel it. He knelt on, inflexible, determined, all his iron will, all his fiery vitality, concentrated upon holding a man in life. It was not all magnetism, it was not all strength of purpose, it was his whole being grappling, striving, compelling, till inch by inch he gained a desperate victory.
In the morning the fight was over. In the morning Lucas Errol had turned, reluctantly as it seemed to Anne, from the Gate of Death.
And while he lay sleeping quietly, the spring air, pure and life-giving, blowing across his face, the man who had brought him back rose up from his bedside, crept with a noiseless, swaying motion from the room, and sank senseless on the further side of the door.