She gave his hand a little squeeze, and shook her head. "I'm all right," she murmured. "I must know."
Jack threw back the flaps, and, stooping, entered. "Hello, there!" he said quietly.
The sick man turned his head. His eyes were unnaturally bright, and a feverish colour suffused his face; his lips were swollen. "Macgreegor," he whispered. He passed a hand across his eyes. "It is Macgreegor, isn't it?"
Something melted in Jack's breast at the sound of the old boyish nickname. "Sure thing," he said, kneeling beside him.
Garrod reached out his hand, and Jack took it. "Thank God, you're here," he murmured in the soft, hurried accents of the fever patient. "I'm going, Macgreegor. I've made a rotten mess of it, haven't I? I'll be glad to go if I can square myself with you first. Where are we? It doesn't matter. Can anybody take down what I want to say?"
Mary's eyes were big with tears. She produced the pencil Jack had given her, but it appeared there was not a scrap of blank paper in the outfit, not a scrap of paper except the little Testament with its ugly stains. Davy handed it to her. On the fly leaves, with their damp, red borders, Mary prepared to write as Garrod dictated.
"Lift me up a little, Macgreegor," Garrod said. "I can breathe easier. Your arm under my shoulders. That's good. It's like the day at Ste. Anne's when I fell out of the tree. We were seventeen then. You were always holding me up one way and another, Macgreegor. You never knew what you were to me. It was quite different from your feeling for me. I can say it now, anyway. I was a bit cracked about you."
"You'll wear yourself out talking," said Jack with gruff tenderness.
"It won't take me long," Garrod said. "I'll have time."
He expressed no further curiosity as to where he was, or how Jack had come there. He referred to no recent happening. His attention was fixed on the all-concealing gray curtain ahead, through which he must presently pass, and he hurried to get what must be said, said in time. There was something uncanny in the perfect clearness of his thoughts, after what had passed.