At that moment the voice of Emily Short reached them from the upper landing. "Miss Beckett—Rachel!" she called, "come—come right up here! Your grandfather—something's wrong!"
In the room under the roof the flaring gas showed old David half sitting, half lying upon the couch.
Rachel darted to him. "Grandfather—what is it?" she shrieked; and winding her arms about him, she tried to centre his wild and wandering glances on herself.
But moaning incessantly, incoherently, he pushed her away with one hand while clutching her tightly with the other. Constantly his eyes questioned her—only to reject all help that she or any other could give him.
To her tortured sense it seemed an eternity before those half-human cries of his were silenced. In reality scarcely ten minutes elapsed before Simon Hart returned with a doctor.
Without hesitation the physician pronounced old David's attack a paralytic shock affecting both the lower limbs, though the disease, he said, might shift at anytime.
When they removed the old man's clothing, from the pocket of his coat rolled a few nuts and a little box of half-melted ice-cream.
CHAPTER VII
STOP—LOOK—LISTEN
Old David was going to die. The sunshine knew it and danced over him caressingly, touching his hands, his face, his hair each day, as if for the last time. It spilled pretty pools of gold on the floor and painted the walls with golden patches. And the plants at the window ledge knew it, two primroses and a pot of yellow jonquils, and for that reason they bloomed constantly, perfuming the air with a delicate freshness.