At length Eva’s wild shrieks died away from sheer exhaustion, and by and by the old man sank into deep, hard-breathed slumber, loud enough to disturb the chore boy in his room downstairs.
It was near daylight, anyhow, so he ventured to rouse the spinster with a rap on her door.
“I b’lieve the old man’s dyin’. I kin hear him breathin’ hard all over the house!” he said.
“Nonsense—only snoring,” she answered testily, but she dressed and aroused the girls.
“He’s goin’ at last,” she said unfeelingly, as she unlocked the door, and they filed in, shivering with the chill of the early morning air.
Gran’ther trying to get out of bed in his delirium had tumbled face downward on the floor, and lay there half-stifled, purple and breathing heavily. They had to call Nick to help them put him back under the covers, and he was cold as death already.
“Not a word of this to any one,” they cautioned the boy. “Folks are so fault-finding, they might say we neglected him, when the truth is we are all worn out nursing him.”
“I’ll fetch the doctor if you want me,” Nick said, with a feeling glance at the pitiful figure on the bed.
“’Tain’t no use—not a mite! He’s too fur gone for a doctor. You go an’ start up the kitchen fire, and do up your chores soon’s possible. You hear?”
Nick went down, and they stood around watching the dying man, who breathed a little more freely now, and suddenly opened his deeply sunken, fading blue eyes, and glanced at them in turn with a weak inquiry that solved itself into the one word: