The Lieutenant came a step forward and put his hand on the table. He was looking strangely from face to face.
Outside the court was very still. The footstep that had passed on the flagstones a minute before had ceased; and there was no sound but the chirp of a bird under the eaves.
“You have not heard then?” said the Lieutenant again.
“Oh! for God’s sake—” cried the old man suddenly.
“I have just come from your son,” said the other steadily. “You are only just in time. He is at the point of death.”
CHAPTER XIII
THE RELEASE
It was morning, and they still sat in Ralph’s cell.
The attendant had brought in stools and a tall chair with a broken back, and these were grouped round the low wooden bed; the old man in the chair on one side, from where he could look down on his son’s face, with Beatrice beside him, Chris and Nicholas on the other side. Mr. Morris was everywhere, sitting on a form by the door, in and out with food and medicine, at his old master’s bedside, lifting his pillow, turning him in bed, holding his convulsive hands.
He had been ill six days, the Lieutenant told them. The doctor who had been called in from outside named the disease phrenitis. It was certain that he would not recover; and a message to that effect had been sent across on the morning before, with the usual reports to Greenwich.