The man gave him a long look, as if he was asking himself a question.
“Yes,” he said at last, “she will be fond of you. You will be worthy of it. There is no one to lay claim to her. Her mother lies dead among strangers, and her father——”
For a few moments he seemed to be falling into a reverie, but suddenly a tremour seized him and he struck one clenched hand against the other.
“If a man vowed to the service of God may make an oath,” he said, “I swear that if the day ever dawns when we stand face to face, knowing each other, I will not spare him!”
The child stirred in Tom’s arms and uttered its first sharp little cry, and as if in answer to the summons, Aunt Mornin opened the door.
“It’s all done,” she said. “Gib me de chile, Mars De Willerby, and go in an’ look at her.”
When he entered the little square living room, Tom paused at the foot of the bed. All was straight and neat and cold. Among the few articles in the one small trunk, the woman had found a simple white dress and had put it on the dead girl. It was such a garment as almost every girl counts among her possessions. Tom remembered that his sisters had often worn such things.
“She looks very pretty,” he said. “I dare say her mother made it and she wore it at home. O Lord! O Lord!” And with this helpless exclamation, half sigh, half groan, he turned away and walked out of the front door into the open air.
It was early morning by this time, and he passed into the dew and sunlight not knowing where he was going; but once outside, the sight of his horse tethered to a tree at the roadside brought to his mind the necessity of the occasion.