Soon after the dawn, Keith came, whipping a horse through the road, soggy with the nightlong rain. He ran across the ruined porch into the wreck of the house and his father answered his searching call with a note of triumph:
“That’s my boy! I knew he’d come! I knew!”
Doctor Brockholst, who had never seen Keith, somehow expected a youth to dash into the room. He was surprised to find that the lad was a grizzled giant of fifty. But Colonel RoBards ran to the couchside and dropped to his knees, with a childish, “Daddy!”
The shock of the contact brought a shriek from the old man’s jolted bones but he wrung a laugh from it. Then he asked the doctor to leave him alone with his son.
Making sure that they were not spied upon, he whispered in a pellmell of hurry:
“I had to see you, Keithie, to get one more promise from you before I go. The city, that infernal New York, will be demanding our farm for the bottom of one of its lakes before long. But don’t let ’em have it! Fight ’em to the last ditch! And whatever you do, don’t let ’em open the cellar walls.
“There may be nothing there to see by now, but you remember about Jud Lasher. He’s there still and after all these years I can’t bear the thought of anybody finding out what we kept inviolate so long, especially after I’m gone and can’t fight back.
“Promise me you won’t let ’em tear down the house and the walls. I’ve seen ’em clear away so many old homes and stone fences and roads—for other lakes. I can’t abide the thought of them prying into our walls.
“And I want to lie by your mother’s side out there in the yard. You’ll put me there. And once I’m there, they’ll never dare disturb me! You can put up a sign like Shakespeare’s: ‘Good friend, for Jesu’s sake, forbear——’ or something like that. Promise.”
“I promise!” said Keith.