His head was still lying on Maude’s lap, but he spoke so low to Charlie that she did not hear the question asked. She only knew that Charlie started quickly, and throwing one arm across her neck as if to save her from some evil, said, promptly, energetically:
“No, no, Arthur; no!”
Then the quivering lips went down again to Arthur’s ear, and Maude caught the word “mistake,” and that was all. She did not know or think what it really meant. It was all a mistake, the terrible war which had brought her so much pain and suffering.
“I die easier now. It was so horrible before. Poor Charlie! Don’t let it trouble you. Care for Maude. She would have been my wife. Stick to our cause. You never forsook it,” came faintly from Arthur, and his eyes, when again they rested on Maude’s face, had lost the strange, frightened look which she had observed when she first came to his side. He was dying very fast, and his mind seemed groping for some form of prayer with which to meet the last great foe.
“Pray, somebody,” he moaned, and Paul Haverill, who, wholly overcome with all he had passed through during the last few hours, had stood dumb and motionless, replied in a choking voice:
“I am not a praying man, but God be with you, my boy, and land you safely on t’other side, where there’s no more fighting.”
“Yes, but that isn’t ‘Our Father.’ I used to say it at home,” came feebly from the white lips, and then Tom Carleton knelt beside the youth whose path had crossed his own so often and so strangely, and with deep reverence and earnest entreaty commended the departing spirit to the God who deals more gently, and mercifully, and lovingly with his children than they dealt with each other.
Tom thought of Isaac Simms, and the noisome, filthy room in Libby where he had first learned to pray, and the thought gave fervor to his prayer, to which Arthur listened intently, his lips motioning the amen he could not speak, for he had no power of utterance. Once again they moved with a pleading kind of motion, and Maude stooped over to kiss them, her long hair falling across the pallid brow, where the blood stains were, and when she lifted her head up, and pushed back her heavy locks, there was the seal of death on Arthur’s face.
CHAPTER XXXV.
THE DEAD AND THE LIVING.
