It was nearly dark when Maggie came in, full of the beautiful church and the tree on which were so many curious things.
“Something for you,” she said to Bennie. “I saw more than one, and I’ll bring ’em to you when it’s out. Don’t cry, Bennie, I’m so sorry you can’t go with me. Next year you will.”
“No, Maggie, I shall never go—never hear my name,” Bennie tried to say, but a fit of coughing severer than any he had ever had came on and the cloth he held to his lips was stained with blood.
Neither Hetty nor Mag knew the danger, or what those crimson stains portended, and both went to the church leaving their father with Bennie, who at first lay very still and seemed to be asleep; then he began to grow restless and asked his father to read to him of the “golden city where the gates stand always open and there is neither sun nor moon.”
But Mr. Hewitt was unused to the Bible, and did not know where to find that description of the New Jerusalem of which Bennie talked so much, sometimes coherently and sometimes not, for his mind wandered a little and was now in “Jerusalem the golden, with milk and honey blest,” where the tree of life was growing and where Christ’s name was written on the foreheads of his children, and then at the church where the names were called, his perhaps, and he bade his father listen and tell him if he heard it.
“I can’t go up,” he said, “I’m so sick, but Maggie will bring them, and next year I shall see that other tree in the New Jerusalem, I guess I will, I mean, for I have tried to be good since she told me how, and I’ve prayed to Jesus every day. Do you love Him, father?”
There was no answer from the rough-faced man who sat watching his child with a pain in his heart such as he had not felt in years.
“Father!” and Bennie’s voice was very low and pleading, “You ain’t drunk now one bit.”
“No, by Jove, no,” came emphatically from the father’s lips, and Bennie continued, “Don’t ever be so any more, will you? Promise me, father, promise your little sick boy, who is going to die.”
“No, Bennie, you must not die, and I’ve been so hard on you, and flogged you when I was in drink,” Mr. Hewitt sobbed, laying his head upon the pillow, while Bennie went on: “But I’ve forgiven that, father, and I was naughty sometimes, and called you names and made faces at you when you did not see me. I’m sorry for it now, and when I’m gone remember me as I was at the best, when I tried to be good, and, father, don’t drink any more, please keep sober, for Maggie’s sake, and Hetty’s; will you? Say you will; say it, father, quick.”