“Here you are,” cried Pete, coming to the bedside, glass in hand. “Drink it up, boy. It'll stiffen you. My faith, but it's a oner. Aw, God is good, though. He's all that. He's good tremenjous.”
Pete was laughing; he was crying; he was tasting a new sweetness—the sweetness of being a good man again.
Philip was holding Jem-y-Lord's paper before his eyes, and trying to read it.
“What's this that Jemmy has given me?” he said. “Read it, Pete. My eyes are dazed.”
Pete took the paper in his left hand, still holding the glass in his right. To get the light on to the writing he went down on his knees by the bed-head and leaned over towards the fire. Then, like a school-boy repeating his task, he read in a singsong voice the words that Jem-y-Lord had written:—“Don't drink the brandy. Pete is trying to kill you.”
Pete made a grating laugh. “That's a pretty thing now,” he began, but he could not finish. His laughter ceased, his eyes opened wide, his tongue seemed to hang out of his mouth, and he turned his head and looked back with an agony of doubt into Philip's face.
Philip struggled up. “Give me the brandy, Pete.” He took the glass out of Pete's hand, and without a second thought, with only a smile of faith and confidence, he raised it to his lips and drank. When the doctor entered the room a moment afterwards, Pete was sobbing into the bed-clothes, and Philip's hand was resting on his head.
XI.
Early the next morning Pete visited Kate in prison. He had something to say to her, something to ask; but he intended to keep back his own feelings, to bear himself bravely, to sustain the poor girl's courage. The light was cold and ashen within the prison walls, and as he followed the sergeant into the cell, he could not help but think of Kate as he had first known her, so bright, so merry, so full of life and gaiety. He found her now doubled up on a settle by a newly-kindled fire in the sergeant's own apartment. She lifted her head, with a terrified look, as he entered, and she saw his hollow cheeks and deep eyes and ragged beard.