“Not a bit, Rough. It’s not daybreak yet. Yer sick, an’ yer head bothers ye.”
“Pard, yer off. I’ve been sick, but I’m well again. It’s not dark like it was. The light’s a-comin’—comin’ like the boyhood days that crep’ inter the winders of the old home.”
“Ye’ve been dreamin’, Rough. The fever hain’t all outen yer head yet.”
“Dreamin’? ’Twa’n’t all dreams. It’s the light comin’, pard. I see ’em all plain. Thar’s the ole man lookin’ white an’ awful, just as he looked the mornin’ he drove me from home; and that woman behind him, stretchin’ out her arms arter me, is the best mother in the world. Don’t you see ’em, pard?”
“Yer flighty, Rough. It’s all dark, ’cepting a pine-knot flickerin’ in the ashes.”
“No—the light’s a-comin’ brighter and brighter. Look! It’s beamin’ over the Range bright and gentle, like the smile that used to be over me when my head lay in my mother’s lap, long ago.”
“Hyar’s a little brandy, Rough. Thar; I seen it though my eyes are dim—somehow—hyar, Rough.”
“Never, pard. That stuff spiled the best years of my life—it sha’n’t spile my dreams of ’em. Oh, sich dreams, pard! They take me to the old home again. I see the white house ’mong the trees. I smell the breath of the apple-blossoms, and hear the birds singin’ and the bees hummin’, and the old plough-songs echoin’ over the leetle valley. I see the river windin’ through the willers an’ sycamores, an’ the dear ole hills all around, p’intin’ up to heaven like the spires of big meetin’-houses. Thar’s the ole rock we called the tea-table. I climb up on it, an’ play a happy boy agin. Oh, if I’d only staid thar, pard!”
“Don’t, Rough; ye thaw me all out, talkin’ that. It makes me womanish.”
“That’s it, pard: we’ve kep’ our hearts froze so long, we want it allus winter. But the summer comes back with all the light from over the Range. How bright it is, pard! Look! How it floods the cabin till the knots an’ cobwebs are plainer than day.”