“I am fearful,” said the dying poet, with that curious smile that was at once proud, gaunt, and melancholy. “I am fearful lest my countrymen should incur the mockery of future ages by seeking to re-embody the life of the first among their authors.”
L
Days passed ere Jimmy Dodson returned again to the little room. They were fraught with dire anxiety for the blind poet and the aged man, his father. In his heart the old man was filled with despair, and he knew not how to obtain the strength wholly to conceal his fears. What if he to whom they had entrusted their priceless treasure should never return to them again! He had neither the devotion nor the blind faith of the dying man.
“They are printing it, they are printing it!” the poet would exclaim many times in the day as he kept the chair beside the hearth.
“What if that strange street-person were never to return to us?” the old man was moved to ask in his despair on the evening of the sixth day.
“Ah, thou dost not know that brave and faithful one, my father,” said the dying poet. “He will overcome fire and the sword rather than his ministry should fail in these last hours of our necessity.”
And on the evening of the seventh day there came a gentle tapping upon the shutters of the shop. With a cry of eagerness the old man opened the door in response, and the forlorn figure of Dodson was seen upon the threshold, his face all drawn with suffering.
“Welcome, welcome,” cried the old man in tones that were thin and overwrought. “Have you brought back the printed book?”
Dodson recoiled from the old man in a kind of harsh rage. He laid one hand upon his coat, and said in a morose whisper, “You will have to know the truth!”
“The truth,” said the old man, with an unsuspectingness which seemed to exasperate the man from the street. “The truth! Why fear to tell it?”