The boy became more easy after this, and seemed to settle himself once more to sleep. But the breathing was shorter and more laboured, and the little brow that rested against the watcher’s cheek grew cold and damp.
For half an hour more the feeble flame of life flickered on, every breath seeming to Reginald as he lay there motionless, scarcely daring to breathe himself, like the last.
Then the boy seemed suddenly to rouse himself and lifted his head.
“Gov’nor—that pallis!—I’m gettin’ in—I hear them calling—come there too, gov’nor!”
And the head sank back on the pillow, and Reginald, as he turned his lips to the forehead, knew that the little valiant soul had fought his way into the beautiful palace at last, and was already hearing the music of those voices within as they welcomed him to his hero’s reward.
Chapter Twenty Five.
There is no Place like Home.
It is strange how often our fortunes and misfortunes, which we are so apt to suppose depend on our own successes or failures, turn out to have fallen into hands we least expected, and to have been depending on trains of circumstances utterly beyond our range of imagination.