“Oh, my darling!”
“Hush, don’t cry, my lass. It’s all over now, but I can’t die peaceful like yet.”
“Let me put your poor hands together, Ike, and I’ll pray for you.”
“Yes, my lass, but not yet. I’m dying, Sally—fast.”
“No, no, Ike. There, let me give you a drop of the stuff the doctor left. It’ll do you good.”
“Nothing’ll do me good but you.”
“Ike, dear, be still and I’ll run and fetch the doctor; he’s at the Fort. Gartram has had a bad fit.”
“Curse him!”
“No, no, dear, don’t curse. You make me shiver.”
There was a terrible silence in the gloomy cottage room, where the ghastly face of the injured man seemed to loom out of the darkness, and looked weird and strange. The woman tried to quit his side, but he held her tightly as he lay gazing straight up at her, his breath coming in a laboured way, as if he had to force each inspiration, suffering agony the while; and if ever the stamp of death was set-plainly upon human countenance, it was upon his.