“Are you afraid, Charley? I hope they’ll not be long.”
“I am not afraid with this,” he answered with a happy smile—and, opening his hand, I saw the little cross clasped in it.
Well, that nearly did for me. It was as though he meant to imply he knew he was dying, and was not afraid to die. And he did mean it.
“You do not comprehend?” he added, mistaking the look of my face—which no doubt was desperate. “I have kept the Saviour with me here, and He will keep me with Him there.”
“Oh—but, Charley! You can’t think you are going to die.”
“Yes, I feel so,” he answered quite calmly. “My mother said, that last Sunday, might not be long after her. She drew me close to her, and held my hand, and her tears were falling with mine. It was then she said it.”
“Oh, Charley! how can I help you?” I cried out in my pain and dread. “If I could only do something for you!”
“I would like to give you this,” he said, half opening his hand again, as it rested on his breast, just to show me the cross. “My mother has seen how good you have always been for me: she said she should look down, if permitted, to watch for me till I came. Would you please keep it to my memory?”
The hardest task I’d ever had in my life was to sit there. To sit there quietly—helpless. Dying! And I could do nothing to stay him! Oh, why did they not come? If I could only have run somewhere, or done something!
In a case like this the minutes seem as long as hours. Dr. Frost was up sooner than could have been hoped for by the watch, and Featherston with him. Raddy did his errand well. Chancing to see the surgeon pass down the road as he was delivering the message at the house, he ran and arrested him. He put his ill-looking face over the stile, as they came up, and I flung him the other sixpence, and thanked him too. The French master came running; others came: I hardly saw who they were, for my eyes were troubled.