“I will not touch a single thing beside,” said Dawtie.
He believed her, and at once proceeded:
“Take my bunch of keys from the hook behind me. There is the key of the closet door!—and there, the key of all the bunch that looks the commonest, but is in reality the most cunningly devised, is the key of the cabinet in which I keep it!”
Then he told her where, behind a little book-case, which moved from the wall on hinges, she would find the cabinet, and in what part of it the cup, wrapped in a piece of silk that had once been a sleeve, worn by Mme. de Genlis—which did not make Dawtie much wiser.
She went, found the chalice, and brought it where the laird lay straining his ears, and waiting for it as a man at the point of death might await the sacramental cup from absolving priest.
His hands trembled as he took it; for they were the hands of a lover—strange as that love was, which not merely looked for no return, but desired to give neither pleasure nor good to the thing loved! It was no love of the merely dead, but a love of the unliving! He pressed the thing to his bosom; then, as if rebuked by the presence of Dawtie, put it a little from him, and began to pore over every stone, every repoussé figure between, and every engraved ornament around the gems, each of which he knew, by shape, order, quality of color, better than ever face of wife or child. But soon his hands sunk on the counterpane of silk patchwork, and he lay still, grasping tight the precious thing.
He woke with a start and a cry, to find it safe in both his hands.
“Ugh!” he said; “I thought some one had me by the throat! You didn't try to take the cup from me—did you, Dawtie?”
“No, sir,” answered Dawtie; “I would not care to take it out of your hand, but I should be glad to take it out of your heart!”
“If they would only bury it with me!” he murmured, heedless of her words.