Once, when Rossie said to him, “Shall I read you something from the Bible?” he answered her with the affirmative sign, and taking her own little Bible, which her mother once used, she opened it at the first chapter of Isaiah, and her eyes chancing to fall upon the 18th verse, she commenced reading in a clear, sweet voice, which seemed to linger over the words, “Come now and let us reason together, saith the Lord; though your sins be as scarlet they shall be white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool.” There were spasms of pain distorting the pinched features on the pillow, as the judge listened to those blessed words of promise and hope for even the worst of sinners. Scarlet sins and crimson sins all to be forgiven, and what were his but these?
“I do believe he’s concerned in his mind,” Rossie thought, as she looked at him; and bending close to him she whispered, amid her own tears, “Shall I say the Lord’s Prayer now?”
She knew he meant yes, and kneeling by his bedside, with her face on his hands, she said the prayer he could not join in audibly, though she was sure he prayed in his heart; and she wished so much for some one older, and wiser, and better than herself, to see and talk to him.
“Shall I send for the minister or for Mrs. Baker?” she asked, feeling in that hour that there was something in the Nazarite woman, fanatical though she might be, which would answer to the sore need.
But the judge wished neither the clergyman nor Mrs. Baker, then; he would rather that pure young girl should read to and pray with him, and he made her understand it, and every day from that time on until the end came, she sat by him and read, and said the simple prayers of her childhood, and his as well,—prayers which took him back to his boyhood and his mother’s knee, and made him sob sometimes like a little child, as he tried so often to repeat the one word “forgive.” Gradually there came a more peaceful expression upon his face; his eyes lost that look of terror and dread, and the muscles about his mouth ceased to twitch so painfully, but of the change within,—if real change there had been,—he could not speak; that power was gone forever, and he lay, dead in limb as a stone, waiting for the end.
Once Rossie said to him, “Do you feel better, Judge Forrest, about dying. I mean, are you afraid now?”
He looked her steadily in the face and she was sure his quivering lips said no to her last question. That was the day he died, and the day when news was received from Everard. He had returned to Louisville from a journey to Alabama, had found the telegrams, and was hastening home as fast as possible. Beatrice was better, and able to be again at the Forrest House, but it was Rossie who took to the dying man the message from his son. He was lying perfectly quiet, every limb and muscle composed, and a look of calm restfulness on his face, which lighted suddenly when Rossie said to him, “We have heard from Mr. Everard; he is on his way home; he will be here to-night. You are very glad,” she continued, as she saw the unmistakable joy in his face. “Maybe you will be able to make him understand what it was you wished to have done, but if you cannot and I ever find it out, depend upon it I will do it, sure. You can trust me.”
She looked like one to be trusted, the brave, unselfish little girl, on whom the dying eyes were fixed, so that Rossie’s was the last face they ever saw before they closed forever on the things of this world, and entered upon the realities of the next. Everard was not there, for the train was behind time, and when at last the Forrest House carriage came rapidly up the avenue, bringing the son who ten days ago had been cast out from his home and bidden never to enter it again, there were knots of crape upon the bell-knobs, and in the chamber above a sheeted figure lay, scarcely more quiet and still than when bound in the relentless bands of paralysis, but with death upon the white face, which in its last sleep looked so calm and peaceful.
CHAPTER XIX.
THE JUDGE’S WILL.
