“All off there, Mr. Parker.” The old man bent his head into his hollowed palms. Tears trickled through his fingers. There was a long silence. The young man did not know how to interrupt that pause.
“I'm feedin' an' tendin' him like I used to when he was a baby an' I a six-year-old. He's at my camp, Mr. Parker. He don't ever want to be seen agin in the world, he says—only an old, trimmed, dead tree, he says. Poor old Gid! No matter what he's been, no matter what he's done, you'd pity him now, Mr. Parker, for the hand o' punishment has fell heavy on my poor brother.”
The engineer, truly shocked, stood beside Joshua, and placed his hand on the bowed shoulders.
“Mr. Ward,” he said, with a quiver in his voice, “never will I do anything to add one drop to the bitterness in the cup that has come to you and yours.”
“I told Gid, I told Gid,” cried the old man, “that you'd say somethin' like that! I had to comfort him, you know, Mr. Parker; but I felt that you, bein' a young man, couldn't make it too hard for us old men. He ain't the same Gid now. See here, sir!”
With tremulous hands he drew a paper from his pocket and handed it to Parker. It was a writing giving sole power of attorney to Joshua Ward. The old man pointed to a witnessed scrawl—a shapeless hieroglyph at the bottom of the sheet.
“Gid's mark!” he sobbed. “No hands—no hands any more! I feed him, I tend him like I would a baby, an' the only words he says to me now are pleasant an' brotherly words.
“An' more'n that, Mr. Parker, I'm on my way down to town. I've got some errands that are sweet to do—sweet an' bitter, too. There's new fires been lit in the dark corners of my poor brother's heart. I've got here a list of the men that Gideon Ward hain't done right by in this life,—that he's cheated,—an' a list of the widows of the men he hain't done right by, an' by that power of attorney he's given me the means, an' he says to me to make it square with them people if it takes every cent he's worth. It won't cost much for me an' Gid to live at Little Moxie, Mr. Parker—an' poor Cynthy—”
He looked into vacancy a while and was silent. Then he went on:
“We'll have our last days together, me an' Gid. All these years that I've lived alone up there the trees an' the winds an' the skies an' the waves of the lake have been sayin' good things to me. I told Gid about them voices. He has been too busy all his life to listen before now. But sittin' there in these days—sit-tin' there, always a-sittin' there, Mr. Parker! Nothing to do but bend his ear to catch the whispers that come up out o' the great, deep lungs o' the universe! He has been listenin', an'”—the old man rose and shook the papers above the head of the engineer—“God an' the woods have been talkin' the truth to my poor brother Gideon.”