"I want to be alone with Peter for a while," he said, turning his face towards the others.
When they were left alone, it was some minutes before anything was said. Peter, not knowing what he did, but knowing what was coming, had gone to the window and hid himself behind the curtains, drawing them tightly around his form as though to shroud himself from sorrow.
At length the colonel said, "Come here!"
Peter, almost staggering forward, fell at the foot of the bed, and, clasping the colonel's feet with one arm, pressed his cheek against them.
"Come closer!"
Peter crept on his knees and buried his head on the colonel's thigh.
"Come up here—closer;" and putting one arm around Peter's neck he laid the other hand softly on his head, and looked long and tenderly into his eyes. "I've got to leave you, Peter. Don't you feel sorry for me?"
"Oh, Marse Rom!" cried Peter, hiding his face, his whole form shaken by sobs.
"Peter," added, the colonel with ineffable gentleness, "if I had served my Master as faithfully as you have served yours, I should not feel ashamed to stand in his presence."
"If my Marseter is ez mussiful to me ez you have been—"