"Do you want me to remain and take charge of things about the place?"
"No," she said, with sharp emphasis, "you must go away and let me die in peace, or as near in peace as possible, for I shall never know a moment's ease. Looking back, it seems that I was born wretched; and yet I know that I was happy until treachery—but I will say nothing. Oh, this miserable world!" She swayed herself to and fro, her lips tightly drawn, her eyes hard-set. "But an end of it all will come sooner or later, and then we can say that it all amounted to nothing—that it was all a nightmare. Here comes your Miss May."
"Walk as softly as you can," Miss May said to me, and then looking down, she added: "Poor fellow, you couldn't make a noise with those tattered feet."
I followed her up the stairs, through the hall where so often I had found the old man walking in the dead silence of the night—followed her into the room opposite our "office." At a glance I saw my young master's canopied bed; and upon it lay the old man, propped high with pillows.
"Come here, Dan," he commanded. His voice was weak, but I was surprised at its clearness. "May, leave us alone, please."
I knelt beside the bed. I took one of his hands and he gave me the other, looking at me with an ashen smile. "Dan, I was determined not to die until I had seen you and I have compelled them to leave me alone most of the time. I was afraid of company—afraid that it might lead my mind off and let death sneak up and master me. I was so determined to live, that nothing but my own mind could have killed me."
How changed he was, even aside from the ravages of disease. His hair was perfectly white and his teeth were gone. His eyes were sunken, but they were still sharp.
"I did not believe he would ever come home, Dan. Something kept on telling me that he would not, morning, noon and night. When we knew that the war could certainly last but a few days more, I took hope; but that something was louder than ever, dinging my boy's death in my ears. So I was not greatly surprised when Elliot came with the news. He gave me your note and told me how he died—like a Gradley and a man. In your note you said—I have it under my pillow—that he told you to say that he loved me. God bless him."
"Master, he told me more than the note contained. He said that if he lived to get home, he would acknowledge to you that he was wrong."
He broke down at this and I wiped the tears out of his eyes.