“John, you are a good man, and true. They will be very solitary. You will be their friend?”
“Always. So help me God!”
The words were spoken like the words of a vow.
The dying man’s mind seemed to wander a little after that; for he asked again if it was morning, and what was to be done in the field to-day. But Effie’s pale face bending over him seemed to recall all.
“Effie,” he said, “I leave them all with you—just as I would have left them with your mother. Be to them what she would have been to you all. You will ay be mindful of the little ones, Effie?”
“Father, with God’s help, I will,” she answered, firmly.
“Poor little ones! Poor wee Christie!” he murmured.
They brought them to him, guiding his hand till it rested on each head, one after the other.
“Fear God, and love one another.” It was all he had strength to say, now. John Nesbitt read from the Bible a verse or two now and then, speaking slowly, that the dying man might hear. Then an old man, one of the elders of the kirk, prayed by the bedside. The uneasy movement of his head upon the pillow, and the aimless efforts of his hands to grasp something, were the only signs of suffering that he gave; and when Effie took his hand in hers, these ceased.
“If Christie would sing, I think I could sleep,” he said. “Her voice is like her mother’s.”