“‘Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.’”
Follett spread the other saddle-blanket over him. He lay on his side, his face to the fire, one moment saying over the words of the psalm, but the next listening in abject terror to something the others could not hear.
“I wonder you don’t hear their screams,” he said, in one of these moments; “but their blood is not upon you.” Then, after a little:—
“See, it is growing light over there. Now they will soon be here. They will know where I had to come, and they will have a spade.” He seemed to be fainting in his last weakness.
Another hour they sat silently beside him. Slowly the dark over the eastern hill lightened to a gray. Then the gray paled until a flush of pink was there, and they could see about them in the chill of the morning.
Then came a silence that startled them all. The drum had stopped, and the night-long vibrations ceased from their ears.
They looked toward the little man with relief, for the drumming had tortured him. But his breathing was shallow and irregular now, and from time to time they could hear a rattle in his throat. His eyes, when he opened them, were looking far off. He was turning restlessly and muttering again. She took his hands and found them cold and moist.
“His fever must have broken,” she said, hopefully. The little man opened his eyes to look up at her, and spoke, though absently, and not as if he saw her.
“They will have a spade with them when they come, never fear. And the spot must not be forgotten—three hundred yards north to the dwarf cedar, then straight over the ridge and half-way down, to the other cedar below the sandstone—and uncoffined, with the book here in this pocket where I have it. ‘Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.’”
He started up in terror of something that seemed to be behind him, but fell back, and a moment later was rambling off through some sermon of the bygone year.