“Paul, my boy,” pleaded Gaspard. The boy stood, it seemed for minutes, his hands writhing, his burning eyes upon his father’s face, his lips closed in a thin white line. His father put out his hand to him. “You promise, Paul?”
“A-a-ah!” A long-drawn sigh that seemed to carry in it the outgoing of his very soul came from Paul’s white lips. “Yes, Daddy. Oh! yes! I promise.”
“Good boy! good boy!” whispered his father, drawing the boy down to him. “I knew! I knew!”
For a long time no one spoke, for Gaspard lay as if exhausted, with eyes closed, voiceless and hardly breathing. After he had rested, Gaspard, always husbanding his strength under the doctor’s care, went over his affairs with the Colonel, turning over everything to his charge.
“There should be something left from the wreckage, Pelham. Not enough, perhaps, but it will all go to Paul. Paul will take care of the others, won’t you, boy?”
“Yes, Daddy, I will,” replied the boy, accepting without question a trust that was to determine for him the course of his life at more than one moment of crisis.
When he had finished with the arranging of his affairs Gaspard called his Indian wife and her children to him. At once the others moved into another room. No one witnessed that farewell, not even Paul. For an hour the woman sat beside the man who was to her life as the sun to the flowers. Almost without speech, without tears or moan or lament, she sat, now with her head pressed down upon his hand, again with his hand pressed hard against her breast, watchful not to weary him or exhaust his failing strength with her grief. Beside him on the bed sat the little blind child, her inquiring little fingers wandering over his face as his voice changed with his pain. Beside his mother sat Peter, silent, stoical, after the manner of his mother’s race. Before he sent them away for the last time Gaspard called Paul to him.
“Paul, boy, you are free to take your way as far as these are concerned. Their way may not be yours. I lay no obligation upon you. This woman is my lawful wife. She is wise and good. But you will do justly by them. This little one,” touching the blind girl beside him, “I had hoped might have had her sight restored. Now—” for the first time since his wounding Gaspard showed signs of breaking—“I don’t know. Life in the wilds would be hard for her.”
“Daddy! Do you think I would leave her?” cried Paul.
“Thank you, Paul! Thank God for you, Paul!” Then the Indian woman at a sign took the children away, leaving Paul close to his bedside.