He obeyed, as in a dream. In whispers, by the yellow lamplight, she forced him to eat and drink; then led the way upstairs. As they tiptoed past, the door of the sick-room stood ajar. Miles peeped in. A shawl curtained the bed from lamp and firelight, but even in deep shadow the sleeper’s face wore a sinister mask of alteration.

“To bed now,” whispered the servant. “I’m settin’ up, Miles.” She touched his shoulder gently. “Come. To-morrow’ll do.”

He lay down, fully dressed, and ready for misfortune. Dozing through the dark hours, he roused, from time to time, at an imaginary summons. Weariness conquered, however, and when he woke Ella stood watching, from beside a window flooded with sunshine.

“He wants to see ye, after breakfast,” she said quietly. “Doctor’s come and gone again. I wouldn’t wake ye, poor dear. No noos. No change, either way.”Again, using a forgotten title of childhood, she compelled him to sit at table: “You must keep up, little Cap’n. Can’t have two sick men.” That new, quiet authority of hers remained a strange comfort, even as he mounted the stairs.

His grandfather lay sunken among pillows, his eyes closed, his features pale, gaunt, profoundly calm. Of suffering, of life itself, no more trace appeared than in a carven effigy of patience. Then quite suddenly his eyes opened, roved about the room in feeble search, and, resting on Miles, lighted dully.

“Ah, the boy! Come sit by me.” He whispered hoarsely, and with slow effort. “I’ve got my orders, haven’t I? Not long, my boy, not so very long now.”

To hear their dread thus put roundly into words, aloud, from the man’s own lips, seemed at first a tragic impropriety.

“Oh, grandfather, no!” Miles faltered, without conviction.

“Yes.” The old man smiled strangely, placidly. “I knew it. Only a bad cold to start with. I could shake that off—” He stirred impatiently, as if to prove his words, then sank back in resignation. “Heart too weak. I overheard the doctor.”

Somehow, for the first time in his life, Miles felt that his grandfather’s frown was rather habitual than unkindly.

“Well, it’s no great matter, Miles.” The voice continued, halting and broken, sometimes clear, sometimes a whisper. “So long as you came time enough—all right. Now I want to make my confession. Don’t you be too hard on me.”Crabbed age and youth had lived together, and lived happily, under fixed conditions of authority and deference; and now the old man’s words, or rather something of anxiety in his look, appeared to reverse all their common habits, to set their life-long attitude topsy-turvy. A judge, severe and just, present above the young man’s daily acts, swaying his blindest motives, had imperceptibly become an unknown strength and necessity. To have this strength suddenly fail, this judgment submit to his own, gave Miles a forlorn sense of uncertainty, of loneliness. Independence, that stern, hard-won privilege, was now granted him without warning, thrust violently into his heart. And the same hand which planted this new gift plucked up thoughts and feelings rooted in his childhood.“It’s this sailor, Florio,” said the old man. “He’s been very heavy on my conscience. He lied to me, but I could use it, and so I lied in turn—to you—perhaps the whole neighborhood—At my age—It’s all disgraceful!”

He paused, and, resting, seemed to cast about for words.

“I’ve been very hard with you. Yes—heavy load, tight rein. I was—was afraid you might slip away. And I want you to start well—to go far. You must be something better than a book-worm, like me—a broken-down surveyor of land. Eh? Yes, better than your father Godfrey, or Christopher; yes, or my brother George, the Admiral himself. Perhaps. Look to it.”

A fit of coughing interrupted him.

“No, sit there. I must talk, anyway,” he continued weakly. “Stand by. Paupers and poorhouses—I’ve always talked those at you, haven’t I? Why, boy? Because I was a miser. We kept lighthouse—for money. That doesn’t matter; but the worst is—” A faint flush had stolen into his hollow cheeks. “The worst is, I even kept this half-breed fellow—God knows who he may be; he’s no friend of Christopher’s—I saw that in the first week, but I took his money. Hard—but I hated—oh yes, disgusting—a shame!”

With a stifled, inarticulate sound, the speaker paused, and closed his eyes for a time, then bent them on Miles in a timid appeal.

“Miser, that’s the word. But—I was saving everything, good and bad—saving for the fund, for your start. I taught you as far as I could. Now promise me you’ll go farther. Out—away from here—the world—study—work. There’s enough for a year, perhaps two. All yours—black and white—my box. You must use it well—came hard. Say you’re not ashamed of me!”

The distance between age and youth, the mist of self, the vague screen dividing their daily lives, were annihilated. In sudden wisdom and contrition, Miles bent his head beside this man whom he had never known before.

“Ashamed?” he cried, dimly measuring the sacrifice. “Ashamed? Oh, grandfather!”

“Come, come, then!” Something of the testy, hard old voice returned for the instant. “Come, then, it’s all right. What did the old preacher say, that they burned? ‘It’s given to no man to choose the time or manner of his death.’ Not a case of Nunc Dimittis, I’m not allowed to see it through. What of that? At least—Call the thing unfinished—a man cut down in hot blood—doesn’t feel it—Only, you must start. Your half begins. I want you—take it all. I never could use fine words!—Go find what you’re good for.”

Miles nodded, but could not speak. Shame and wonder contended in him, at thought of his own blindness all these years: he had considered his grandfather as a grim, silent man, preoccupied with gloomy fear of the future. Revelation had come: the spent runner now resolutely passed on the torch, and Miles trembled at his unworthiness to receive it from such hands.

“One thing more,” continued the old man, stirring uneasily. “What was this Ella said, t’other day, about sweethearts, or some nonsense? Did she mean—Is there—”

“I—I don’t know,” stammered Miles. The challenge had struck him hot and cold. The more sincerely he faced it, the more this question deepened into a yawning pit of subtleties. “Honestly—I don’t know.”

“Don’t know?” His grandfather eyed him almost angrily. “What sort of answer is that? See here, I can’t have—At your age—You must promise me—”

A violent cough seized him, and left him shaken and breathless. For a long time he rested, as if asleep. And when at last he spoke again, a smile of serene humor, of high forbearance and security, lighted the sunken eyes.

“You promise nothing, boy. If I had promised my father—I’m an old fool. We’ve agreed to the main thing, already. It’s all right. You’re a man. Give me the—that nasty dose, there.”

He sank back, as though he had reserved all his forces for their interview, and now lay exhausted. The ticking of a clock, the flutter of the fire, accompanied that labored breathing through slow and sorrowful hours. The watcher must have dozed; for of a sudden, the shadows of the hackmatack boughs quivered easterly along the floor. The afternoon was already closing. Ella sat, with folded hands, by the hearth.

Time again dragged by, till the sleeper moved. Without seeming to wake, he whispered:—

“I can’t remember. Bring me the book.”

A Bible lay on the table; but as though he heard Miles lift it, he shook his head.“I’ve read that. I know it. The other—below—the black book.”

Ella nodded, stole from the room, and returned with the old man’s volume of the poets.

“How does it go? Read to me, Miles. ‘Even so is time’—You know it.”

Miles found the page, and with an unsteady voice obeyed.

The old man stopped him, with a sign of content, and took up the lines, whispering:—

He lay very still; but when, after a time, Ella would have offered him something in a glass, he put her hand feebly aside. Miles could not hear their words, except, “If every one was faithful as you—” and the woman’s reply, “I’ll never leave him till he sends me away.” She rose, and, crossing to the window, where a row of geraniums glowed in the sunset, stood picking blindly at the dead leaves.

He continued to speak, but neither audibly nor with the living. From time to time they caught the name of George, Godfrey, or Christopher. His eyes remained closed; but his face turned slightly, now and then, with the air of one who clearly saw and heard the persons in a ghostly conference. As day drooped into night, the seen fused with the unseen. And it was in a mystical twilight that he turned toward Miles, at last, with a look of grave relief, which told that the council had reached some fortunate conclusion. The lips barely moved, and indeed the eyes made their effort needless.

“I’m satisfied, my boy.”

The only praise he had ever given, it was beyond all value.

The woman lighted a lamp behind the shawl; then stood beside Miles, waiting. Nothing moved in the room, except twin shadows of the andirons fluttering on the wall, alert and capricious as a pair of fencers. In the passage Tony the sailor had paused silently, like a man drawn by strange impulse to the edge of a forbidden circle.

Something approached, arrived, and culminated. The counterpane stirred. It was as though a broad and soothing wave had lifted the prostrate figure slightly, and passed, bearing away the spirit in one gentle, mighty undulation.

The servant was the first to speak.

“He was a good man,” she whispered. “It’s over now. He was a good man.”

Within two days Richard Bissant lay beside his brother, the Admiral, close beneath a yellow birch that rose in the highest field, a living monument, a landmark to ships below in the river. He had taught Miles to believe that the natural body is raised a spiritual body, and that this corruptible must put on incorruption. And though the grave, cut in frozen earth, and ringed about with shapeless banks of snow, seemed in those bleak surroundings to gain more than a brief victory, yet the survivor, feeling his sorrow as a man, could still dispute it like a man.

One thing, in this time of perplexity, appeared beyond mistake; and that was Tony’s unwonted and unflagging kindness. Silent in his moccasins, like a sea-gaited Indian, he had come and gone about the house, bringing armfuls of firewood, helping Ella, tending the tower lamps. It was he who ran all errands to Kilmarnock, and shoveled the broad path from their door to the birch tree on the hill. Not only his activity, but his silence and retirement, had shown a right spirit, touched honestly. Miles, recalling his former thoughts, saw them as unjust. After all, the sailor, like the man who was now become a memory, had only kept his own counsel. “And I blamed him for that!” thought Miles, with remorse.And yet Tony’s presence was none the less disquieting. It had vexed and humbled, however needlessly, the closing days of a most honorable life; and Miles, though wishing to keep the man’s friendship, rebelled at thought of using him for profit. Right or wrong, it was very strongly in his mind that Tony must either leave or come to an explanation; for since that conference in the sick-room, the sailor’s standing, the whole arrangement, became more and more false and intolerable.

Other questions cropped up in their altered household,—questions of the past and the future, jostling in a mind still dazed. And it was these which, two nights after the burial on the hill, kept the young man restless. He lay revolving vague plans, resolutions, regrets, till at last, foregoing all hope of sleep, he rose, dressed in the dark, and stole downstairs to the little front room which had been his grandfather’s “library.” A puddle of ruby coals still glowed in the fireplace; but before sitting down by these, he turned toward the gray square of the windows, and stood looking out through a wide, cosmic starlight, faint and deceptive, but dimly intensified by frosty air and the whiteness of snow. Without speech or language, the heart of the darkness strengthened the heart of youth, as above the silent valley night unto night showed knowledge.

Stillness without grew almost palpable, through stillness within. The house lay drowned in sleep. But suddenly Miles heard a thin, brushing sound upon the landing above, the squeak of a board, and the dry rasp of a hand sliding down the banister-rail. Some one descended with extreme caution, and then, below the row of pegs in the dark corridor, struggled into a jacket, with subdued fluttering of heavy cloth. The front door slowly creaked, and, letting chill air flood the room, as slowly creaked again.

It lacked two hours before time for inspection; and besides, whoever went to the towers would carry a lantern. Miles watched. A dark, thick-set blur moved out under the starlight and disappeared between the two hackmatack pillars. Tony the sailor was up and about his affairs.

Angry and determined, Miles crept along the passage, drew on his reefer as silently as the other had done, and slipped outdoors into the freezing darkness.