“Yes, Lansing, I am the Chaplain. But I did not think anybody remembered now.”
Tom Lansing’s eyes leaped wide with doubt and question. They stared full at the Bishop. Then they turned and saw the table standing in its right place; saw Ruth Lansing standing by the table; saw the dog at the fireplace. The man there was real!
Tom Lansing made a little convulsive struggle to rise, then fell back gasping.
The Bishop put his hand gently under the man’s head and eased him to a better position, saying:
“It was just a chance, Lansing. I was driving past and had broken a trace, and came in to borrow one from you. You got a bad blow. But your girl has just sent my driver for help. They will get a doctor somewhere. We cannot tell anything until he comes. It perhaps is not so bad as it looks.” But, even as he spoke, the Bishop saw a drop of blood appear at the corner of the man’s white mouth; and he knew that it was as bad as the worst.
The man lay quiet for a moment, while his eyes moved again from the Bishop to the girl and the everyday things of the room.
It was evident that his mind was clearing sharply. He had rallied quickly. But the Bishop 15 knew instinctively that it was the last, flashing rally of the forces of life––in the face of the on-crowding darkness. The shock and the internal hemorrhage were doing their work fast. The time was short.
Evidently Tom Lansing realised this, for, with a look, he called the girl to him.
Through the seventeen years of her life, since the night when her mother had laid her in her father’s arms and died, Ruth Lansing had hardly ever been beyond the reach of her father’s voice. They had grown very close together, these two. They had little need of clumsy words between them.
As the girl dropped to her knees, her eyes, wild, eager, rebellious, seared her father with their terror-stricken, unbelieving question.