He took the pen she offered him into his unsteady fingers, and began, in feeble characters, to trace his name at the bottom of the manuscript. While he did so, he murmured broken words.
“I am guilty—I am guilty! I only. Lord, Thou knowest who hast saved me! Only his tenderness, like Thine—only his gracious heart, Thy true follower, has screened me, a miserable sinner, from the doom of the slayer! It is I only—my Lord, Thou knowest it is I!”
He had signed his name. Christian laid him back tenderly upon the pillow. With a firm hand she placed her own signature at the side of the document, and then gave the pen to Anne. The sister of the man who had done the deed, and the sister of him who had suffered for it—it was meet their names should stand together. Anne added hers. She could form some idea, of what this paper was. She signed it as a witness.
The words of the dying man ran on—a feeble, murmuring stream.
“Christian! he is alive—he is safe! No evil has come upon them! Tell me again—tell me again! They do not curse me—they forgive the miserable man who has made them exiles? It is over now, Christian. All your anguish—all your vigils: their disgrace and banishment—it is over now. God knows, who has visited me with His mercy and His light, why this desolation has fallen upon you all for my sin. I have been a coward. Christian, Christian! when they are home in their joyous household—when they have forgotten all their grief and dishonor, when they are tranquil and at rest—they will never name my name; my memory will be a thing of shame and fear: they will shrink from me in my grave.”
The thin hands met in silent appeal. There was a wistful, deprecating glance thrown upon Anne and Christian.
“Patrick,” said Christian, “can we ever shrink from you, who have been willing, for your sake, to endure the hardest calamity that could be thrown upon man? Can they forget your name, who have lost their own for your sake, and never murmured? Patrick! look upon his sister. She has come to us in our sorest trouble; she has clung to us with her tenderest service, as if we had blessed him, and not blighted. Take your comfort from her. As for me, my labor is over. I will live to see Marion. I must, if it be the Lord’s will—but for forgetfulness, or shame, or shrinking, ye never thought of me!”
Anne stood by the bedside. The eyes of the dying man, so intensely blue, and strangely clear, were shining wistfully upon her. She could not find words to speak to him.
“Mind them of me,” said Patrick Lillie, faintly. “Tell them, that if they have suffered pain for me, they never can know what agony, bitterer than death, I have endured within this desolate house. Bid them mind me as I was, in yon bright, far away time, that I have been dwelling in again this day. Tell them, the Lord has given me back my hope, that He gave me first in my youth. Tell them, I am in His hand, who never loses the feeblest of His flock. Tell them—”
He was exhausted—the breath came in painful grasps.