“I went back South after the war,” he began again. “I stole my girl’s mother from her grandfather, an old, broken-down Confederate colonel that would have shot me if he ever laid eyes on me. I brought her up here into the hills and she died when the baby was just a few weeks old.
“There ain’t a relation in the world that my little girl could go to. I’m goin’ to die in half an hour. But what better would she be if I lived? What would I do with her? Keep her here and let her marry some fightin’ lumber jack that’d beat her? Or see her break her heart tryin’ to make a livin’ on one of these rock hills? She’d fret 20 herself to death. She knows more now than I do and she’d soon be wantin’ to know more. She’s that kind.
“She’d ought to have her chance the way I’ve seen girls in towns havin’ a chance. A chance to study and learn and grow the way she wants to. And now I’m desertin’; goin’ out like a smoky lamp.
“It was a crime, a crime!” he groaned, “ever to bring her mother up into this place!”
“You could not think of all that then. No man ever does,” said the Bishop calmly. “And I will do my best to see that she gets her chance. I think that’s what you want to ask me, isn’t it, Lansing?”
“Do you swear it?” gasped Lansing, struggling and choking in an effort to raise his head. “Do you swear to try and see that she gets a chance?”
“God will help me to do the best for her,” said the Bishop quietly. “I am the Bishop of Alden. I can do something.”
With the definiteness of a man who has heard a final word, Tom Lansing’s eyes turned to his daughter.
Obediently she came again and knelt at his side, holding his head.
To the very last, as long as his eyes could see, they saw her smiling bravely and sweetly down into them; giving her sacrament and holding her 21 light of cheering love for the soul out-bound.