“No, not quite,” cried Gwyn. “Let’s have one more try—I will, and you shall.”
He made an effort to rise, but sank back and nearly fainted, but recovered himself to feel that Joe had got hold of his hand, and he uttered a piteous sigh.
“Light’s going out, Jolly, and if they don’t find us soon our lights’ll go out, too. I wouldn’t care so much if it wasn’t for the mater, because it will nearly kill her,” he continued drearily. “She’s ever so fond of me, though I’ve alway been doing things to upset her. Father won’t mind so much, because he’ll say I died like a man doing my duty.”
“How will they know that?” mused Joe, whose eyes were half-closed. “Let’s write it down on paper.”
Gwyn was silent for a few moments as he lay thinking, but at last he spoke.
“No,” he said; “that would be like what father calls blowing your own trumpet. He used to say to me that if he had gone about praising himself and telling people that he was a great soldier and had done all kinds of brave deeds, he would have been made a general before now; but he wouldn’t. ‘If they can’t find out I’ve done my duty, and served my Queen as I should, let it be,’ he said. And that’s what we ought to do when we’ve fought well. If they don’t find out that we’ve done what we should, it doesn’t much matter; let it go. I’m tired out and faint, as you are, and—so’s the candle, Joe. There, it has gone out.”
Joe uttered a low, long, weary sigh, as, after dancing up and down two or three times, the light suddenly went out.
“Frightened?” said Gwyn, gently, as the black darkness closed them in.
“No, only sleepy,” was the reply. “Good-night.”
“Good-night,” said Gwyn, softly; and the next minute they were sleeping calmly, with their breath coming and going gently, and the dripping of water from somewhere close at hand sounding like the beating of the pendulum of some great clock.