There was so deep a stillness for some minutes after that, that all the indistinct sounds from the busy streets seemed to grow and come nearer. Gip lifted up her little head to look about her; but when Sandy held up his hand, she laid it down quietly again on the pillow beside Johnny's white, still face. His fingers dropped her tiny hand. Which of them was Sandy to gaze at? Gip's rosy cheeks and glittering eyes, or John Shafto's pale, cold face, with a film creeping over his sight, and the smile dying away from his lips?
"Oh, Johnny!" he sobbed. "Couldn't you stay just a little bit longer? Wouldn't you like to stay with little Gip just for one day? Don't die to-day, Johnny, just when I've found my little Gip."
"I'm very glad she's found," he whispered, his lips so near to Sandy that he could catch every word; "but I cannot stay. Lost and found! Dead and alive again! Rejoice with me! He is saying that."
"Who says that?" asked Sandy; but there was no answer.
They were all looking at Johnny's face; even little Gip's black eyes were fastened upon it, for it shone with a strange light. His lips moved slowly, though Sandy himself could not hear what they were speaking. His eyes shone with a steady beam of gladness. Then his head fell lower upon his mother's breast; and she uttered a single cry of great anguish, for she knew that he was dead.
———◆———
[CHAPTER XVII.]
A VISION.
LITTLE Gip's curly head was still resting very quietly on Johnny's pillow, and Sandy's arm was stretched across his friend to touch Gip's soft hand. But now Mr. Mason lifted the child from the bed, and told him in a whisper to take her away.
He carried her downstairs into the dark and desolate kitchen below, where the grey ashes of the dead fire held no spark of light or heat. Could all that he had passed through that evening be really true? Was this indeed lost Gip whom he held so closely to his heart? Little Gip, for whom he had searched, with a heavy heart and a spirit bowed down by dread, through so many long months, and in so many miserable places? If it were true, why was he not leaping and shouting for joy? What was it that made him sink down on the solitary hearth, with no other light than the glimmer of the gas, burning amid the funeral plumes in the shop beyond the kitchen, and hide his face on Gip's head, and break out into deep sorrowful sobs? Oh, if John Shafto could only have lived one day longer!