Pete was crouching on his low stool beside this hand. He needed no softening to touch it now. The chill fingers were in his palm, and his hot tears were falling on them. Remembering the crime that he had so nearly committed, he was holding himself in horror. His friend! His life-long friend! His only friend! The Deemster no longer, but only the man. Not the man either, but the child. The cruel years had rolled back with all their burden of trouble. Forgotten days were come again—days long buried under the débris of memory. They were boys together again. A little, sunny fellow in velvet, and a bigger lad in a stocking-cap; the little one talking, always talking; the big one listening, always listening; the little one proposing, the big one agreeing; the little one leading, the big one following; the little one looking up and yet a little down, the big one looking down and yet a little up. Oh, the happy, happy times, before anger and jealousy and rage and the mad impulse of murder had darkened their sun shine!
The memories that brought the tenderest throb to Pete as he sat there fingering the lifeless hand were of the great deeds that he had done for Philip—how he had fought for him, and been licked for him, and taken bloody noses for him, and got thrashed for it by Black Tom. But there were others only less tender. Philip was leaving home for King William's, and Pete was cudgelling his dull head what to give him for a parting gift. Decision was the more difficult because he had nothing to give. At length he had hit on making a whistle—the only thing his clumsy fingers had ever been deft at. With his clasp-knife he had cut a wondrous big one from the bough of a willow; he had pared it; he had turned it; it blew a blast like a fog-horn. The morning was frosty, and his feet were bare, but he didn't mind the cold; he didn't feel it—no, not a ha'p'orth. He was behind the hedge by the gate at Ballure, waiting for the coach that was to take up Philip, and passing the time by polishing the whistle on the leg of his shining breeches, and testing its tone with just one more blow. Then up came Crow, and out came Philip in his new peaked cap and leggings. Whoop! Gee-up! Away! Off they went without ever seeing him, without once looking back, and he was left in the prickly hedge with his blue feet on the frost, a look of dejection about his mouth, and the top of the foolish whistle peeping out of his jacket-pocket.
The thick sob that came of these memories was interrupted by a faint sound from the bed. It was a murmur of delirium, as soft as the hum of bees, yet Pete heard it.
“Cover me up, Pete, cover me up!” said Philip, dreaming aloud.
Philip was a living man! Thank God! Thank God!
A whisper goes farther than a shout. The people behind whispered the news to the passage, the passage to the stairs, the stairs to the hall, and the hall to the garden, where a crowd had gathered in the darkness to look up at the house over which the angel of death was hovering.
In a moment the room was croaking like a frog-pond. “Praise the Lord!” cried one. “His mercy endureth for ever,” cried another. “What's he saying?” said a third. “Rambling in his head, poor thing,” said a fourth.
Pete turned them out—all except Jem-y-Lord, who was still moistening the Deemster's face and opening his hands, which were now twitching and tightening.
“Out of this! Out you go!” cried Pete hoarsely.
“No use taking the anger with him—the man's tried,” they muttered, and away they went.