"Grace, love, will you go to Willard? He has something to say to you."
The southern sun hung low in the western heavens; the day was excessively warm for April, and a little cloud in the sky, "no bigger than a man's hand," foreboded a shower. Grace turned from the window where she stood watching the shifting white clouds in the blue sky, and went back to the room from which she had stolen to hide the bitter pain at her heart.
A very solemn silence hung about the white-draped chamber. The window shutters were open to admit the balmy air, and a slanting ray of sunshine had stolen in and brightened the top of the sick man's pillow, touching into golden radiance the dark locks pushed away from his brow. The wan and wasted face wore a beautiful serenity that was not of earth. "God's finger" had "touched him" very gently, but palpably.
Grace bent over him, taking his cold white hand in hers with voiceless emotion. She had grown so fond of him in a warm, sisterly fashion, reverenced his brave, pure, upright spirit so highly that it seemed to her a close and kindred soul was winging its way from her side to the bright beyond, leaving her more alone and desolate than ever.
"It is almost over," he said, looking up at her with the reflex of a smile in the beautiful dark-gray orbs that kept their luminous radiance to the last.
She answers not. How can she break with the sounds of human grief the brooding peace that shines on the pathway of this departing spirit? Her voice, the sweetest one he will ever hear on this side of eternity, rises low but firm in one of the old-fashioned hymns the old-fashioned captain loved:
"Fear not, I am with thee. O be not dismay'd,
I, I am thy God, and will still give thee aid;
I'll strengthen thee, help thee, and cause thee to stand,
Upheld by my righteous, omnipotent hand.
"When through the deep waters I call thee to go,
The rivers of grief shall not thee overflow;
For I will be with thee thy troubles to bless,
And sanctify to thee thy deepest distress."
"Amen," he whispers, lowly. "His rod and His staff they comfort me."