And, sure enough, there came a day when no Seth put in an appearance, and Jim's fears felt themselves justified.
He sent Joyce round to his lodgings. The old man had never turned up the night before.
It came at a bad time too, for they were working might and main at their preparations for the coming campaign. The Guards had left for Southampton the day before. They themselves were down for service and the call might come any day. War, indeed, had not yet been formally declared, but that was a minor matter. There was no doubt about what was going to happen.
So Jim packed off Joyce in a hansom, with orders to make the round of the hospitals and report at once if he got any news.
He was back at midday. The old man was lying at Guy's, broken to pieces and not expected to last the day out.
Jim jumped into the cab with a very heavy heart. It was just what he had feared, and it was terribly sad. And yet, as his cab wormed its slow course through the traffic about London Bridge, there came to him a dim apprehension that what seemed to them so sorrowful a happening might, after all, in some inscrutable way, be the better way for old Seth. For his life, if he had lived, must have been a sad and broken affair, and now----
He found the old man lying quietly in his bed, with the screens already drawn round it. He was only just in time.
The gaunt gray face brightened at sight of him, as Jim took his hand gently and sat down beside him.
"Ah'm fain to see yo'," he said, with difficulty. "'Twur a waggin . . . aw my fault. . . . Tell her. . . . Tell her . . ."--the crushed chest laboured in agony,--"tell her to come whoam. . . ."
And presently, without having spoken again, the dim light failed suddenly in the weather-worn gray eyes, and the life faded out of the gnarled brown hand, and Jim, boy still, put down his head and sobbed at the grim sadness of it all.