“I say, John, old man, this is no way for you to talk. Brace up, and you will soon be another man!”
“I shall soon be in another world, I hope,” and the helpless misery of the tone in which these few words were said smote Laurence Laughton to the heart.
“What’s the matter with you?” he asked with as lively an air as he could attain, for the ominous and inexplicable sadness of the situation was fast taking hold on him.
“I have a bullet through the lungs and a pain in the heart.”
“But men do not die of a bullet in the lungs and a pain in the heart,” was Larry’s encouraging response.
“I shall.”
“Why should you more than others?”
“Because there is something else—something mysterious, some unknown malady—which bears me down and burns me up. There is no use trying to deceive me, Larry. My papers are made out, and I shall get my discharge from the Army of the Living in a very few days now. But I must not waste the little breath I have left in talking about myself. I sent for you to ask a favor.”
Larry held out his hand, and John Manning took it and seemed to gain strength from the firm clasp.
“I knew I could rely on you,” he said, “for much or for little. And this is not much, for I have not much to leave. This worn old house, which belonged to my grandmother, and in which I spent the happiest hours of my boyhood, this and a few shares of stock here and there, are all I have to leave. I do not know what the house is worth—and I shall be glad when I am gone from it. If I had not come here, I think I might perhaps have got well. There seems to be something deadly about the place.” The sick man’s voice sank to a wavering whisper, as though borne down by a sudden weight of impending danger against which he might struggle in vain; he gave a fearful glance about the room as though seeking a mystic foe, hidden and unknown. “The very first day we were here the cat lapped its milk by the fire and then stretched itself out and died without a sign. And I had not been here two days before I felt the fatal influence: the trouble from my wound came on again, and this awful burning in my breast began to torture me. As a boy, I thought that heaven must be like this house; and now I should not want to die if I thought hell could be worse!”