“Oh, I’m here yet!” he said, thinking his patient needed the reassurance. “I’m staying here right by you, to say prayers, or get water or anything you want. Dan left me here to take care of you. He has gone for the doctor; and if you just hold on till they get here, why, maybe—maybe—they’ll pull you through all right. Gee whilikins!” exclaimed Freddy, as the sick man suddenly started up from his rude pillow. “You mustn’t do that!”
“I must—I must!” was the hoarse reply; and Freddy was caught in a wild, passionate clasp to his patient’s heart. “Dying or living, I must claim you, hold you, my boy,—my own little son,—little Boy Blue!” The voice sank to a low, trembling whisper. “Little Boy Blue, don’t you know your own daddy?”
And Freddy, who had been struggling wildly in what he believed to be a delirious grasp, suddenly grew still. “Little Boy Blue,”—it was the nursery name of long ago,—the name that only the dad of those days knew,—the name that even Brother Bart had never heard. It brought back blazing fire, and cushioned rocker, and the clasp of strong arms around his little white-robed form, and a deep, merry voice in his baby ear: “Little Boy Blue.”
Freddy lifted a frightened, bewildered little face. The eyes,—softened now with brimming tears; the straight nose like his own, the waving hair, the scar he had so often pressed with baby fingers,—ah, he remembered,—little Boy Blue remembered! It was as if a curtain were snatched from a far past that had been only dimly outlined until now.
“My daddy,—my daddy,—my own dear daddy!” he cried, flinging his arms about the sick man’s neck. “Oh, don’t die,—don’t die!”
For, weak and exhausted by his outburst of emotion, the father had fallen back upon his pillow, gasping for breath, the sweat standing out in great beads on his brow, his hand clutching Freddy’s own in what seemed a death clasp.
And now Freddy prayed indeed,—prayed as never in all his young life he had prayed before,—prayed from the depths of his tender, innocent heart, in words all his own.
“O God, Father in heaven, spare my dear daddy! He has been lost so long! Oh, do not let me lose him again! Save him for his little boy,—save him, spare him!”
Without, the sky had darkened, the wind moaned, the waves swelled white-capped against the low shore. The August storm was rising against Last Island in swift wrath; but, wrestling in passionate fervor for the life that had suddenly become so precious to him, Freddy did not hear or heed. The dogs started out into the open. Father and son were alone in the gathering gloom.
Through what he believed the throes of his death agony, the sick man caught the sweet, faltering words: “O dear Lord, have mercy on my dear father! Let him live, and we will bless and thank You all the rest of our lives. He has been lost so long, but now he has come back. Oh, try to say it with me, daddy: you have come back to be good,—to live good and live right forever!”