Somehow, it does seem to matter now. Life--even this life--has possibilities which I have failed to grasp. With you to help me, it seems I should have gained a clearer understanding of eternal verities. A haze--a mist is creeping over my senses. What I have to write I must write quickly.
"I think you know by a deed of settlement, executed before I left for South Africa, in the event of my death, my brother Raymond, and my dear sister Emmeline, become Carol's guardians. There is no time now to alter that arrangement in any way, even if I wished. It will be good for the boy to be with his cousins. He has seen too little of other children, and Emmeline, I know, will be a mother to him. Both she and Raymond will respect my last wishes, I am sure. Therefore, I want them to know it is my desire for Carol to spend three months of every year with you at his own home, that you may instruct him in that knowledge of God which has healed him. It is recorded that once ten were cleansed, and nine went thankless away. He must not belong to the nine.
"I have explained to Colonel Mandeville my earnest desire that you may be able to live at the Court, keeping on all the old servants until Carol is of age. The last time I saw my brother Raymond, the subject of Christian Science was mentioned, and from the remarks he made, his bitterly antagonistic views of it, I greatly fear that under his guardianship Carol may not be allowed to continue the study. Will you purchase for me a copy of the text-book, Science and Health, and write in it:
No one will take from the boy his dying father's last gift, and my wishes regarding it will I know, be paramount with him. He will like to know that my one regret now is that I did not myself study it when I had the opportunity.
"I have faced death before. I am facing it again, as a soldier, and, I trust, as a Christian. Somewhere it is written 'Greater love hath no man'-- You know the rest. Perhaps it will count, though it may not have been love so much as duty prompted the action which is costing me my life.
"I would write to Carol, and to Emmeline. I cannot. The pen slips from my hand."
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The concluding sentence and the signature were almost illegible. Mrs. Mandeville took Carol in her arms, and they wept together.
"It is so cruel to think he might have been spared to us," she sobbed.
"Yes, Auntie; he would have been," Carol replied with simple faith.