“It can’t hurt me. Don’t mind, little one.” He saw the tears in her eyes, and tightened his hand on her fingers. “ ’Tis a good ending. I wouldn’t ask for a better.”
Wally came back, a young man in uniform, with the R.A.M.C. badge on his collar, at his heels. The doctor bent over the old priest. Presently he rose, shaking his head as he met David Linton’s eyes.
“There’s nothing to be done,” he said, softly.
The old man’s hearing was no less acute.
“ ’Tis myself could have told you that,” he said. “I knew . . . next time it came. And . . . when a man’s ready . . .”
His voice became almost inaudible, murmuring broken words of prayer. Behind them Jim had formed a line of soldiers, keeping off the curious crowd. Presently he spoke again.
“It’s easy, dying. Only it would be easier if I’d seen it again . . . Ireland.”
“We’re very near,” Norah told him, pityingly.
“Near! And not to see it!” He tried to rise, helplessly. “Ah, but let me look—let me look!”
David Linton’s eyes met the doctor’s.