“How is Mrs. Merrymusk?”
“Well.”
“And the children?”
“Well. All well.”
The last two words he shouted forth in a kind of wild ecstasy of triumph over ill. It was too much. His head fell back. A white napkin seemed dropped upon his face. Merrymusk was dead.
An awful fear seized me.
But the cock crew.
The cock shook his plumage as if each feather were a banner. The cock hung from the shanty roof as erewhile the trophied flags from the dome of St. Paul’s. The cock terrified me with exceeding wonder.
I drew nigh the bedsides of the woman and children. They marked my look of strange affright; they knew what had happened.
“My good man is just dead,” breathed the woman lowly. “Tell me true?”