s none, they have gone
downstairs cackling and clucking and crowing in various versions of
'Praise God for that!' I hate people who are always singing the doxology.

* * * * *

"Noon.--Condition unchanged, except that in the intervals of drowsiness
his mind has wandered a little. He appears to live in the past. Looking
at me with conscious eyes, he calls me 'Lancelot'--my father's name. It
has been so all the morning. One would think he was walking in a twilight
land where he mistakes people's faces and the dead are as much alive as
the living.

"They all think I am brave, oh, so brave! because I do not cry now, as
everybody else does--even Aunt Anna behind her apron--although my tears
can flow so easily, and at other times I keep them constantly on tap. But
I am really afraid, and down at the bottom of my heart I am terrified. It
is just as if _something_ were coming into the house slowly,
irresistibly, awfully, and casting its shadow on the floor already.

"I have found out the cause of his outcries in the night. Aunt Rachel
says he was dreaming of my father's departure for Africa. That was
twenty-two years ago, but it seems that the memory of the last day has
troubled him a good deal lately. 'Don't you remember it?' he has been
saying. 'There were no railways in the island then, and we stood at the
gate to watch the coach that was taking him away. He sat on the top and
waved his red handkerchief. And when he had gone, and it was no use
watching, we turned back to the house--you and Anna and poor, pretty
young Elise. He never came back, and when Glory goes again she'll never
come back either.'

"In the intervals of his semi-consciousness, when he mistakes me for my
father, my wonderful bravery often fails me, and I find excuses for going
out of the room. Then I creep noiselessly through the house and listen at
half-open doors. Just now I heard him talking quite rationally to Rachel,
but in a voice that seemed to speak inwardly, not outwardly, as before.
'She can't help it, poor child!' he said. 'Some day she'll know what it
is, but not yet, not until she has a child of her own. The race looks
forward, not backward. God knew when he created us that the world
couldn't go on without that bit of cruelty, and who am I that I should
complain?'

"I couldn't bear it any longer, and with a pain at my heart I ran in and
cried, 'I'll never leave you, grandfather.' But he only smiled and said,