Miss Benham rose to her feet smiling, and she came and stood near where the old man lay propped up against his pillows. She touched his cheek with her cool hand, and old David put up one of his own hands and patted it.
"I'm going to bed now," said she. "I've sat here talking too long. You ought to be asleep and so ought I."
"Perhaps! Perhaps!" the old man said. "I don't feel sleepy, though. I dare say I shall read a little." He held her hand in his and looked up at her.
"I've been talking a great deal of nonsense about marriage," said he. "Put it out of your head! It's all nonsense. I don't want you to marry for a long time. I don't want to lose you." His face twisted a little quite suddenly.
"You're precious near all I have left, now," he said.
The girl did not answer at once, for it seemed to her that there was nothing to say. She knew that her grandfather was thinking of the lost boy, and she knew what a bitter blow the thing had been to him. She often thought that it would kill him before his old malady could run its course.
But after a moment she said very gently—
"We won't give up hope. We'll never give up hope. Think! he might come home to morrow. Who knows?"
"If he has stayed away of his own accord," cried out old David Stewart in a loud voice, "I'll never forgive him—not if he comes to me to-morrow on his knees! Not even if he comes to me on his knees!"
The girl bent over her grandfather, saying: "Hush! hush! You mustn't excite yourself." But old David's grey face was working and his eyes gleamed from their cavernous shadows with a savage fire.