For just as Bessy was bending over to speak to him, startled slightly by his lengthened silence, he turned to her and smiled lovingly and tenderly as his thin hand pressed hers.
“Kiss me, Bessy,” he said, in a low, strange voice; and as she gazed at him with dilating eyes, and pressed her lips to his, he said gently, “The doctor!”
It was then that Bessy beckoned anxiously to Mr Meldon, who came hastily across the deck and knelt down, taking the hand feebly stretched out to him.
“Not the pulse, doctor, the palm,” said John Studwick, his face lighting up with a strange unearthly smile.
“I’m not jealous now. Be kind to my darling sister. Good-bye.”
As Bessy burst into a fit of sobbing and lowered her head upon his breast, he laid his hand upon her glossy curls. Then seeing his father bending eagerly over him, he tried to raise his other hand, but it fell back, his lips formed the words “Good-bye” once more; and, as his eyes smiled up in his father’s face, the lines around them gradually hardened, the pupils dilated in a fixed stare, and those who gazed down upon him knew that the spirit had fled to its lasting home.