“Did he get well again?”
“Just for a day or two, sir. The fever left him, but he was in the shockingest state of weakness you could imagine. The night before he died——”
The Squire started up. “Dan Sanker’s not dead, Ferrar!”
“Yes he is, sir. It’s what I have come to tell of.”
“Goodness bless me! Poor Dan dead! Only think of it, Johnny!”
But I was not surprised. From the moment Ferrar first spoke, an instinct had been upon me that it was so. He resumed.
“Everything was done for him that could be, sir. We had a doctor on board—a passenger going to California—but he could not save him. He said when it came to such awful weakness as that, there could be no saving. Mr. Conroy and the other officers were very kind to him—the skipper too; but they could do nothing. All his fears seemed to be gone then; we could hardly hear his whispers, but he was sensible and calm. He said he knew God had forgave him for what he did, and would blot his sin out, and King had forgave him too, and had come to tell him so: he had been to him in the night and talked and smiled happily and said over to him a verse of ‘Lord Bateman’——”
“And you say he was in his senses, Ferrar?”
“Yes, sir, that he was. That night he made a confession, Mr. Conroy and the doctor and me being by him. It was he that killed King.”