"What's the matter?" queried Kurt, and a cold chill shot over him.
Jerry plucked at his sleeve.
"Your old man—your dad—he's overworked hisself," whispered Jerry. "It's tough.… Nobody could stop him."
Kurt felt that the fulfilment of his icy, sickening dread had come. Jerry's dark face, even in the uncertain light, was tragic.
"Boy, his heart went back on him—he's dead!" said Olsen, solemnly.
Kurt pushed the kind hands aside. A few steps brought him to where, under the light of the lantern, lay his father, pale and still, with a strange softening of the iron cast of intolerance.
"Dead!" whispered Kurt, in awe and horror. "Father! Oh, he's gone!—without a word—"
Again Jerry plucked at Kurt's sleeve.
"I was with him," said Jerry. "I heard him fall an' groan.… I had the light. I bent over, lifted his head.… An' he said, speaking English, 'Tell my son—I was wrong!'… Then he died. An' thet was all."
Kurt staggered away from the whispering, sympathetic foreman, out into the darkness, where he lifted his face in the thankfulness of a breaking heart.