But he couldn't find him: he hunted all over the house, and out in the barn, and the door-yard, and the street; and then he rousted up Mr. Gowdey's folks, our nearest neighbors, to see if they could help find him.
Wall, Miss Gowdey, when she wus a bringin' in her clothes,—it was Monday night,—she had seen him out in the orchard under the sick-no-further tree.
And there they found him, fast asleep—where they s'pose he had fell asleep unexpected to himself.
It wus then almost eleven o'clock, and he was wet with dew: the dew was heavy that night. And when they rousted him up, he was so hoarse he couldn't speak. And before mornin' he was in a high fever. They sent for me and the doctor at daybreak. Little Samantha Joe wus better: it only proved to be a hard cold that ailed her.
But the boy had the scarlet-fever, so the doctor said. And he grew worse fast. He didn't know me at all when I got home, but wus a talkin' fast about his mamma Cicely; and he asked me “If the gate had swung down, for him to go through into the City, and if his mamma was inside, reachin' out her arms to him?”
And then he would get things all mixed up, and talk about things he had heard of, and things he hadn't heard of. And then he would talk about how bright it was inside the gate, and how he see it from the orchard. And so we knew he had been attracted out by the bright light in the west.
And then he would talk about the strangest things. His little tongue couldn't be still a minute; but it never could, for that matter.
Till along about the middle of the afternoon he become quiet, and grew so white and still that I knew before the doctor told me, that we couldn't keep the boy.
And I thought, and couldn't help it, of what Cicely had worried so about; and though my heart sunk down and down, to think of givin' the boy up,—for I loved him,—yet I couldn't help thinkin' that with his temperament, and as the laws was now, the grave was about the only place of safety that the Lord Himself could find for the boy.
And it wus about sundown that he died. I had been down-stairs for somethin' for him; and as I went back into the room, I see his eyes was wide open, and looked natural.