“He’ll remember,” said I, confidently, “that you was once a little lad––jus’ like me.”
“God knows!” said he.
I was then bade go to sleep....
Presently I fell asleep, but awoke, deep in the night, to find my uncle brooding in a chair by my bed. The moon was high in the unclouded heaven. There was no sound or stirring in all the world––a low, unresting, melancholy swish and sighing upon the rocks below my window, where the uneasy sea plainted of some woe long forgot by all save it, which was like a deeper stillness and silence. The Lost Soul was lifted old and solemn and gray in the cold light and shadow of the 68 night. I was troubled: for my uncle sat in the white beam, striking in at my window, his eyes staring from cavernous shadows, his face strangely fixed and woful––drawn, tragical, set in no incertitude of sorrow and grievous pain and expectation. I was afraid––’twas his eyes: they shook me with fear of the place and distance from which it seemed he gazed at me. ’Twas as though a gulf lay between, a place of ghostly depths, of echoes and jagged rock, dark with wind-blown shadows. He had brought me far (it seemed) upon a journey, leading me; and having now set my feet in other paths and turned my face to a City of Light, lifted in glory upon a hill, was by some unworthiness turned back to his own place, but stayed a moment upon the cloudy cliff at the edge of darkness, with the night big and thick beyond, to watch me on my way.
“Uncle Nick,” said I, “’tis wonderful late in the night.”
“Ay, Dannie,” he answered; “but I’m wantin’ sore t’ sit by you here a spell.”
“I’ll not be able,” I objected, “t’ go t’ sleep.”
“’Twill do no hurt, lad,” said he “if I’m wonderful quiet. An’ I’ll be quiet––wonderful quiet.”
“But I’m wantin’ t’ go t’ sleep!”