indlin' for th' mornin'."

The alcove where the old man's bed stood was only separated by a thin
partition from the room where the young couple slept; and the sounds of
their frolic, as they chased, slapped, and cast pillows at each other,
came to him companionably enough as he drew the blankets up about his
big, shrunken chest and turned the broad of his back to the comfortable
hay-stuffed bed-tick.

But all the merry noise and sociable proximity of the young people
staved not off the great joust with loneliness this mighty knight of
years had before he slept--a loneliness more than that of empty house
and echoing stair; more than that, even, of Crusoe's manless island;
utterly beyond even that of an alien planet; of spaces not even coldly
sown with God-aloof stars--the excellent, the superlative loneliness of
one soul for another. It is a strange, misty, Columbus-voyage upon which
that hardy soul goes who dares to be the last of his generation.

There was in that bed a space between him and the wall--a space kept
habitually yet for the Nanny who never came to fill it, who never again
would come to fill it. (There would have been no great demonstration on
the old man's part even if she had miraculously come. Merely a grunt of
satisfaction; perhaps a brief, "Ey, ma--back?" and then a contented
lapsing into slumber.) His want of her was scarcely emotional; at least
it did not show itself to him that way. It took more the form of a kind
of aching wish to see things "as they was" again. But that ache, that
uneasiness, had upon Old Dalton all the effect of strong emotion--for it
rode him relentlessly through all these days of his December, its weight
and presence putting upon the tired old heart an added task. The
ordinary strain of life he might have endured for another decade, with
his perfect old physique and natural habits of life. But this extra
pressure--he was not equipped for that!

"They go quick, at that age," his granddaughter's man had said. But,
although even he himself did not know it, Old Dalton had been "going"
for weeks--ever since the first confident feeling that "ma" would come
back again had given place to the ache of her coming long delayed.

To-night it was cold in bed for August. Old Dalton wished "they" would
fetch him another quilt.

But it should not have been cold that August evening. Beyond the wooden
bed a small, rectangular window with sash removed showed a square of
warm sky and a few st