In spite of his iron nerve Mr. Calcott winced slightly. This mere babe was playing round the feet of the king of Terror, while he was quailing secretly at the thought of the skeleton hand raised ready to strike: it would find him in his darkness and loneliness; his truest friend would come to him in the guise of an enemy. He was not a weak man, but at this moment the thought of his solitary death-bed caused him to thrill with premonitory pain and anguish. And then, with an odd transition of idea, he remembered how one night, when he was a lad, he had been wakened from his sleep by an awful storm; and his little sister Emily had come crying to his bed-side, and had clung to him in an agony of terror. He remembered, as though it were yesterday, the little shivering figure in white, the tangled fair hair under the cap border, the childish voice broken with sobs, "Oh Andrew, dear Andrew, take care of me; I am so frightened."
"You are only a girl, Emmie; boys and men are never frightened; why I don't know what fear is," he had returned, half scoffingly, and yet proud to shield her, and to feel himself strong in his boy's strength.
Ah, he knew what fear meant now. He thought, with the cold clammy sweat of superstitious terror, of what the coffin lid would cover; while a child's lips blessed him—him, Andrew Calcott, dead, unloved, and unremembered—blessed him in her prayers.
God pardon his wasted, misused life, he groaned, and grant him one single fragment of opportunity more, and he should not be unremembered; and the flicker of a strange smile curved Andrew Calcott's lips as he silently registered this vow.
"Are you sleepy or tired, Uncle Andrew?" asked Emmie, rather awe-stricken by the long silence and closed eye-lids, and still more by the smile. "When you lay like that, so still and white," continued the child, "you reminded me of the figure of the old Crusader—a knight I think he was—on the tomb I saw once in church. Do you know what I was thinking about when I watched you?"
He shook his head.
"I was wondering if you felt afraid—to die, I mean."
"Well, child; what then?" regarding her strangely.
"I used to be terribly afraid, you know," creeping closer, and whispering confidentially. "When I sat alone in the old garret,—ah, the poor old garret; I don't hate it quite so much now,—and it got dark, and the silence had odd voices in it, I used to think about mamma and want to go to her; only I could not get to her without dying, and that troubled me."
"Hush, Emmie," interrupted her sister, softly; but Mr. Calcott waved her aside, and bade her let the child speak, and Queenie drew back again into the shade of the curtain.