“Is there anything I can do? Any one else you want, uncle?” she enquired, speaking close to his ear.
The breathing, almost stertorous now, ceased for an instant. He seemed to be trying to collect strength to say something.
“Your father—tell him from me—bear no malice—” He could get no further.
“Yes—yes—don’t think about it—don’t distress yourself,” said Katharine, quickly. “I’ll tell him.”
Again the heavy breathing blew the stiff white hairs of his beard and moustache, as his chin, raised in the effort of speaking, fell suddenly to his breast again. The breath raised the coarse white and sandy hairs and blew them to right and left. The eyelids drooped. Katharine wondered whether old men always died like that. Then the thought that he was really dying put on its reality for the first time, and struck her suddenly in the heart, and the pain she felt struck back instantly into her helpless, bandaged arm.
“Is it God?” asked the dying man, suddenly, in a louder voice and quite clearly.
Again, in the effort, his chin rose and fell. There was something awful in the question, asked with the strength of the death struggle. Then came more words, indistinct and broken.
“I shall be—a little boy again.” So much Katharine understood of what she heard.
Her tears gathered. Some of them fell upon the yellow, branch-like hand. Then she bent close to his ear again.
“There is God,” she said. “God will take you, dear—He is taking you now. Think of Him. You’re dying.”