“I will take one watch, if you will take the other,” I said to the minister.
He nodded. “I will watch until midnight.”
It was long past that time when he roused me from where I lay at Mistress Percy’s feet.
“I should have relieved you long ago,” I told him.
He smiled. The moon, now high in the heavens, shone upon and softened his rugged features. I thought I had never seen a face so filled with tenderness and hope and a sort of patient power. “I have been with God,” he said simply. “The starry skies and the great ocean and the little shells beneath my hand,—how wonderful are Thy works, O Lord! What is man that Thou art mindful of him? And yet not a sparrow falleth——”
I rose and sat by the fire, and he laid himself down upon the sand beside me.
“Master Sparrow,” I asked, “have you ever suffered thirst?”
“No,” he answered. We spoke in low tones, lest we should wake her. Diccon and my lord, upon the other side of the fire, were sleeping heavily.
“I have,” I said. “Once I lay upon a field of battle throughout a summer day, sore wounded and with my dead horse across my body. I shall forget the horror of that lost field and the torment of that weight before I forget the thirst.”
“You think there is no hope?”