"He has been up three nights, Miss Axtell,—I only one."
"I did not know it," she said. "I forgot that I had been so long ill."
"Will you try and sleep?" once more I asked; "it is near morning."
She wished to know the hour, made me give her watch into her own keeping, and then said "she would not talk, no, she would be very quiet, if I would only gratify her by making myself comfortable on the lounge." It did not seem very unreasonable, and I consented.
"But you are looking at me," she said. "I hate to be watched; do shut your eyes."
I looked away from her. Time went on. I heard the clock strike four times, in the March night. Miss Axtell was very quiet,—better, I was convinced. I arose once to rebuild the fire. Wood-fires burn down so soon. Then I took up my watch, thinking over the strange events, all unconsummated, that had been and still were in being under this roof.
Five hours came booming up from the village-clock. The wind must have changed, or I could not have heard the strokes, so roundly full.
"How short the hour has been!" was my first thought. Kino began a furious, untimely barking. "What for?" I wondered; and I lifted up my head and listened. No sound; the room was very still. Miss Axtell had dropped the curtains of the bed. It annoyed her, I supposed, to feel herself watched. "Her breathing is very soft," I thought; "I do not even hear it. Her sleep must be pleasant, after the fever."
I laid my head down to its resting-place, listening still. Kino kept up a low, ominous growl, quite different from his first barking. Nothing more came. "I'm glad he doesn't waken Miss Axtell," I thought; and gradually Kino dropped his growls into low, plaintive moans, which in time died away. As they did so, another sound, not outside, but in the house, set my poor, weak heart into violent throbbings. Footsteps were in the upper hall, I felt sure. Miss Axtell might not hear them, if she had not heard Kino's louder noise. Slowly they came,—not heavy, with a stout, manly tread, but muffled. They came close to the door. If the key were only in it! But I could not move. I heard a hand going over it, just as I had heard that hand three days before in the dark tower. A moment's awful pour of feeling, and then came the gentlest, softest of knocks. Why did I not get up and see who it was? Simply because Nature made me cowardly, and meant me, therefore, to bear cowardice bravely. I never moved. A second time came the knock, but no more nerve of sound in it than at the first. A hand touched the knob after that, and turning it gently, the door was carefully pushed open, and a figure, looking very much like Mr. Axtell, only the long, dark hair fell over his face, came noiselessly in. I could not tell at the moment who it was. I watched him cautiously. He stood still, looking first at the bed, whose curtains were down, then around the room. For one moment I thought him looking at me, and involuntarily my eyelids closed, lest he might know himself watched. He put up his hand, and pushed back the heavy hair from his forehead. It was only Mr. Axtell. The relief was so great that I spoke,—softly, it is true.
"What is it?" I asked. "Is anything wrong, Mr. Axtell?"