"Until at his coming of age he shall receive the whole estate, if there is any;
"Save only that I bequeath to Madame Scotson my sword and the Victoria Cross;
"And with regard to burial, it is my will that no money whatever shall be spent, but that my body, wrapped in the flag by right of her majesty's commission, shall be consigned to the earth by my neighbors; that no friend of mine shall be allowed to stand uncovered catching cold, or to wear unseemly black clothing at the service of the resurrection, or to toll bells which should be pealed when the soul passes to God, or to make pretense or parade of grief for one who is glad to go."
The months of nursing were ended. No longer should Nurse Panton and I be afraid when our patient was good, or rejoice when fractious whims and difficult absurdities marked those rallies in which he fought off death. At the last, after many hours of silence, he asked me in a boyish voice if he might go up-stairs to see his uniform. In his dreams he was leaving school to enter the royal navy.
Billy was away on an errand to the Falls, and it was Nurse Panton's watch below, when at ten in the evening I saw the change come very suddenly. The face of my dear friend, no longer old, but timeless, reflected an unearthly majesty.
For the next hour I was busy rendering the last services, in haste, for the lamp had a most peculiar smell. I took it away and lighted candles, but it was not the lamp. Spreading the Union Jack upon the bed, I bolted from that room. For a time I sat in the dining-hall but could not stay there. Even in the barroom I still had to fight off something intangible, a sense of being watched, a presentiment of evil coming swiftly nearer.
Closing the door which led into the house, I opened that which gave upon the yard, then placed a flickering candle on the counter, and my chair in front of it facing the darkness. All through the evening the drenching rain had fallen, with sob of dripping eaves. Now at the open doorway, loud, insistent, the great diapason of the rain was choral to those little sad voices which fluted, throbbed, and muttered near at hand, the lament of the water drops, the liquid note from every pool, the plaint of trickling streamlets.
It is the presence of the dead which makes their resting-places serene with quiet beauty, instinct with tenderness toward all living hearts. That presence had entered the good log house, a home of human warmth, of kindly comfort, made holy, consecrate, where people would hush their voices, constrained to reverence.
And in the gracious monotone of the rain, compound of voices joined in requiem, I felt a soothing melancholy beauty, knowing well how peace not of this world had come into the homestead.
But outside that, beyond, in the dread forest, a threat, a menace filled the outer darkness. Fear clutched at my heart, a presentiment told me of evil, of instant danger. Then, as though the horror in the night moved other hearts as well as mine, the Chinese cook came groping his way through the dining-hall and humbly scratched at the door. I let him in and he crept to a stool in the near corner. I whispered to him: