would come back to-morrow and watch a bit by
the bedside. But I got him to add—and I
shook my head hard to make it stronger—"We
agree that we never saw this face before."

Our boy was greatly surprised when we told
him sitting out in the balcony in the starlight,
and he ran over some of those stories of former
Lodgers, of the Major's putting down, and asked
wasn't it possible that it might be this lodger or
that lodger. It was not possible and we went to
bed.

In the morning just at breakfast-time the
military character came jingling round, and said
that the doctor thought from the signs he saw
there might be some rally before the end.
So I says to the Major and Jemmy, "You two
boys go and enjoy yourselves, and I'll take my
Prayer-Book and go sit by the bed." So I went,
and I sat there some hours, reading a prayer for
him poor soul now and then, and it was quite on
in the day when he moved his hand.

He had been so still, that the moment he
moved I knew of it, and I pulled off my
spectacles and laid down my book and rose and
looked at him. From moving one hand he began
to move both, and then his action was the action
of a person groping in the dark. Long after his
eyes had opened, there was a film over them and
he still felt for his way out into light. But
by slow degrees his sight cleared and his hands
stopped. He saw the ceiling, he saw the wall,
he saw me. As his sight cleared, mine cleared
too, and when at last we looked in one another's
faces, I started back and I cries passionately:

"O you wicked wicked man! Your sin has
found you out!"

For I knew him, the moment life looked out
of his eyes, to be Mr. Edson, Jemmy's father
who had so cruelly deserted Jemmy's young
unmarried mother who had died in my arms, poor
tender creetur, and left Jemmy to me.

"You cruel wicked man! You bad black
traitor!"

With the little strength he had, he made an
attempt to turn over on his wretched face to
hide it. His arm dropped out of the bed
and his head with it, and there he lay before
me crushed in body and in mind. Surely the
miserablest sight under the summer sun!

"O blessed Heaven" I says a crying, "teach
me what to say to this broken mortal! I am
a poor sinful creetur, and the Judgment is not
mine."

As I lifted my eyes up to the clear bright
sky, I saw the high tower where Jemmy had
stood above the birds, seeing that very window;
and the last look of that poor pretty young
mother when her soul brightened and got free,
seemed to shine down from it.

"O man, man, man!" I says, and I went on
my knees beside the bed; "if your heart is rent
asunder and you are truly penitent for what
you did, Our Saviour will have mercy on you
yet!"

As I leaned my face against the bed, his
feeble hand could just move itself enough to
touch me. I hope the touch was penitent. It
tried to hold my dress and keep hold, but the
fingers were too weak to close.

I lifted him back upon the pillows, and I says
to him:

"Can you hear me?"

He looked yes.

"Do you know me?"

He looked yes, even yet more plainly.

"I am not here alone. The Major is with
me. You recollect the Major?"

Yes. That is to say he made out yes, in the
same way as before.

"And even the Major and I are not alone.
My grandson—his godson—is with us. Do you
hear? My grandson."

The fingers made another trial to catch at my
sleeve, but could only creep near it and fall.

"Do you know who my grandson is?"

Yes.

"I pitied and loved his lonely mother. When
his mother lay a dying I said to her, 'My dear
this baby is sent to a childless old woman.' He
has been my pride and joy ever since. I love
him as dearly as if he had drunk from my breast.
Do you ask to see my grandson before you
die?'

Yes.

"Show me, when I leave off speaking, if you
correctly understand what I say. He has been
kept unacquainted with the story of his birth.
He has no knowledge of it. No suspicion of it.
If I bring him here to the side of this bed, he
will suppose you to be a perfect stranger. It
is more than I can do, to keep from him the
knowledge that there is such wrong and misery
in the world; but that it was ever so near him
in his innocent cradle, I have kept from him,
and I do keep from him, and I ever will keep
from him. For his mother's sake, and for his
own."

He showed me that he distinctly understood,
and the tears fell from his eyes.

"Now rest, and you shall see him."

So I got him a little wine and some brandy
and I put things straight about his bed. But I
began to be troubled in my mind lest Jemmy
and the Major might be too long of coming
back. What with this occupation for my
thoughts and hands, I didn't hear a foot upon
the stairs, and was startled when I saw the
Major stopped short in the middle of the room
by the eyes of the man upon the bed, and knowing
him then, as I had known him a little while
ago.

There was anger in the Major's face, and
there was horror and repugnance and I don't
know what. So I went up to him and I led
him to the bedside and when I clasped my hands
and lifted of them up, the Major did the like.

"O Lord " I says "Thou knowest what we
two saw together of the sufferings and sorrows
of that young creetur now with Thee. If this
dying man is truly penitent, we two together
humbly pray Thee to have mercy on him!"

The Major says "Amen!" and then after a
little stop I whispers him, "Dear old friend fetch
our beloved boy." And the Major, so clever as