"Listen, little one," he whispered, while his lips quivered. "I am an old fool, but not a fiend—not a devil. Not a gun would have fired. I wet all the powder. I didn't want anybody to say the Riffraffs flinched at the last minute. But you—oh, my God!" His voice sank even lower. "You have given your young life for my folly."
She understood.
"I haven't got any pain—only—I can't move. I thought I'd get hurt worse than I am—and not so much. I feel as if I were going up—and up—through the red—into the blue. And the moon is coming sideways to me. And her face—it is in it—just like the picture." She cast her eyes about the room as if half conscious of her surroundings. "Will they—will they love me now?"
Mrs. Magwire, sobbing aloud, fell upon her knees beside the bed.
"God love her, the heavenly child!" she wailed. "She was niver intinded for this worrld. Sure, an' I love ye, darlint, jist the same as Mary Ann an' Kitty—an' betther, too, to make up the loss of yer own mother, God rest her."
Great tears rolled down the cheeks of the dying child, and that heavenly light which seems a forecast of things unseen shone from her brilliant eyes.
She laid her thin hand upon Mrs. Magwire's head, buried now upon the bed beside her.
"Lay the little blanket on me, please—when I go—"
She turned her eyes upon the sky.
"She worked it for me—the 'Darling' on it. The moon is coming again—sideways. It is her face."