It seemed as if he could not move his eyes from it, and the pause that followed was so long that Louisiana could bear it no longer, and she lifted her head and kissed him.
"Father!" she cried. "Say something to me! Say something to me!"
It drew him back and he looked up into her eyes as she bent over him.
"Ye'll be happy—" he said, "afore long. I kinder—know. Lord! how I've—loved ye, honey—an' ye've desarved it—all. Don't ye—do no one—a onjestice."
And then as she dropped her white face upon the pillow again he saw her no longer—nor the people, nor the room, but lay quite still with parted lips and eyes wide open, smiling still at the golden tree waving and beckoning in the wind.
This he saw last of all, and seemed still to see even when some one came silently, though with tears, and laid a hand upon his eyes.
CHAPTER XVII.
A LEAF.
There was a sunny old grave-yard half a mile from the town, where the people of Bowersville laid their dead under the long grass and tangle of wild-creeping vines, and the whole country-side gathered there when they lowered the old man into his place at his wife's side. His neighbors sang his funeral hymn and performed the last offices for him with kindly hands, and when they turned away and left him there was not a man or woman of them who did not feel that they had lost a friend.