Gabriel took the torch with trembling fingers and knelt down on the floor to examine it closely. He started back from the place, as he saw that it was quite dry—the torch dropped upon the hearth—he fell on his knees before the statue of the Virgin and hid his face.
“Is the floor wet? Answer me, I command you—is the floor wet?” asked the old man, quickly and breathlessly.
Gabriel rose, went back to the bedside, and whispered to him that no drop of rain had fallen inside the cottage. As he spoke the words, he saw a change pass over his grandfather’s face—the sharp features seemed to wither up on a sudden; the eager expression to grow vacant and death-like in an instant. The voice, too, altered; it was harsh and querulous no more; its tones became strangely soft, slow, and solemn, when the old man spoke again.
“I hear it still,” he said, “drip! drip! faster and plainer than ever. That ghostly dropping of water is the last and the surest of the fatal signs which have told of your father’s and your brother’s deaths to-night, and I know from the place where I hear it—the foot of the bed I lie on—that it is a warning to me of my own approaching end. I am called where my son and my grandson have gone before me; my weary time in this world is over at last. Don’t let Perrine and the children come in here, if they should awake—they are too young to look at death.”
Gabriel’s blood curdled when he heard these words—when he touched his grandfather’s hand, and felt the chill that it struck to his own—when he listened to the raging wind, and knew that all help was miles and miles away from the cottage. Still, in spite of the storm, the darkness, and the distance, he thought not for a moment of neglecting the duty that had been taught him from his childhood—the duty of summoning the priest to the bedside of the dying. “I must call Perrine,” he said, “to watch by you while I am away.”
“Stop!” cried the old man. “Stop, Gabriel; I implore, I command you not to leave me!”
“The priest, grandfather—your confession—”
“It must be made to you. In this darkness and this hurricane no man can keep the path across the heath. Gabriel, I am dying—I should be dead before you got back. Gabriel, for the love of the Blessed Virgin, stop here with me till I die—my time is short—I have a terrible secret that I must tell to somebody before I draw my last breath! Your ear to my mouth—quick! quick!”
As he spoke the last words, a slight noise was audible on the other side of the partition, the door half opened, and Perrine appeared at it, looking affrightedly into the room. The vigilant eyes of the old man—suspicious even in death—caught sight of her directly.
“Go back!” he exclaimed faintly, before she could utter a word; “go back—push her back, Gabriel, and nail down the latch in the door, if she won’t shut it of herself!”