"Be quick! be quick!" panted the child, and his voice failed him with his excitement. Sir Everard tried to soothe him, and hoped he would be quiet. But a few minutes after his uncle was gone, it became evident that Humphrey was struggling to say something before his uncle should return. His excitement and exhaustion made him more incoherent than usual, and after once or twice repeating his uncle's name, his voice failed altogether, and though his white lips moved, no sound came.
Sir Everard was greatly distressed; the boy fixed his eye so pleadingly on him, he was so earnest in what he was trying to say, that it went to the father's heart not to be able to understand him. He strained every nerve to catch the words, but in vain.
The excitement of hearing his uncle returning gave Humphrey a momentary strength, and he held his father's hand with all the strength he could muster, and said, "Promise!"
"I promise, my darling," said Sir Everard, hastily, too thankful to catch even a word.
And nobody ever knew that the boy's last request had been that never, never was his uncle to know that it was his story that had first made him think of the branch that stretched over the pond where the water-lilies grew.
Quite worn out he allowed himself to be laid back upon his pillow, and with closed eyes waited while his uncle opened the Bible and found the underlined passage:—
"And I heard a voice from heaven as the voice of many waters ... and I heard the harpers harping with their harps. And they sang as it were a new song ... and no man could learn that song, but the hundred and forty and four thousand which were redeemed from the earth."
* * * * * *
No more restless questions, no more perplexed search after what is lying somewhere in the past. He did not speak, he did not answer his father's eager enquiry as to whether that was what he had been trying to remember; and he lay so still, so motionless, that for one moment they thought he had passed away without hearing the words he had longed for. But the unsatisfied look had gone from his face, and his father saw that his mind was at rest. He was breathing gently as in a deep sleep.