r than death; no covert,
diligent, desperate economies of the vital spark; but a frank, helpless
reception of the dread angel as a royal guest, and a pious, inert
consent to let the dying die. Before either Hugh or Ramsey could come
from the cabin the twins had reached the bedside and had been received
with a final lighting up of the boy's spent powers, which his mother
made no effort to restrain. In a feeble, altered voice, without heat,
scorn, or petulance, with a mind stripped of all its puerilities and
full of fraternal care and faithfulness, and with a magisterial dignity
far beyond his years, he slowly poured out a measured stream of
arraignment and appeal which their hardened hearts were still too young
to withstand unmoved.

His conversion, he told them, had come to him with a great light, "on
the road to Damascus," and by that light he saw, as he implored them to
see, the hideous deformity of the life he and they and the young fellows
of their usual companionship had been living. Even Ramsey knew, he
continued as she and their old nurse silently reappeared, that by the
plainest laws of the land, they were not too good for the penitentiary.
An overweening pride in their lawlessness did not justify or excuse it;
the devils had that, in hell. They, the twins, were not Christian
gentlemen. They were _not gentlemen at all_. They'd shoot a man down in
his tracks for saying so, or for calling them liars, yet they'd turn the
truth wrong side out every day in the year. These last two days they'd
done it right along. At this moment they had a fixed design to kill Hugh
Courteney on the first good chance and didn't care a continental whether
they did it in face-to-face murder or from behind a bush. Lying at
death's door, he said, and in jealousy for the same Hayle name they
professed to be so jealous for, he demanded their oath to abandon that
design; to stop it, drop it, "right here and now," and never to seek the
life of any Courteney but in clear defence of some other life. His own
seemed almost to fade out at that point, yet presently:

"Hold up your right hands," he gasped, trying to raise his. The mother
lifted it for him while giving the twins a tearful flash of command.
Unconsciously Ramsey put up hers as Lucian's left suddenly caught
Julian's right and he held up both it and his own.

But neither the boy nor Ramsey nor the old nurse felt assured, and all
three were glad when the mother asked:

"You swear?"