ave for a slight quiver of the eyelids
she did not stir. A sense of awe fell upon him.

"It's Death," he said to himself. He had experience enough to teach him
that. He turned to the man.

"You had better go out of the room; I will do my best."

* * * * *

In a little over an hour Aunt Mornin dismounted from her mule and
tethered it to a sapling at the side of the road below. She looked up at
the light gleaming faintly through the pines on the hillside.

"I cum 's fas' 's I could," she said, "but I reckon I'd orter been here
afore. De Lord knows dis is a curi's 'casion."

When she crossed the threshold of the cabin, her master pointed to a
small faintly moving bundle lying at the foot of the bed over which he
was bending.

"Take it into the other room and tell the man to come here," he said.
"There's no time to lose."

He still held the weak hand; but the girl's eyes were no longer closed;
they were open and fixed on his face. The great fellow was trembling like
a leaf. The past hour had been almost more than he could bear. He was
entirely unstrung.

"I wasn't cut out for this kind of thing," he had groaned more than once,
and for the first time in his life thanked Fate for making him a failure.

As he looked down at his patient, a mist rose before his eyes, blurring
his sight, and he hurriedly brushed it away.

She was perhaps nineteen years old, and had the very young look a simple
trusting nature and innocent untried life bring. She was small, fragile,
and fair, with the pure fairness born of a cold climate. Her large
blue-gray eyes had in them the piteous appeal sometimes to be seen in the
eyes of a timid child.

Tom had laid his big hand on her forehead and stroked it, scarcely
knowing what he did.

"Don't be frightened," he said, with a tremor in his voice. "Close your
eyes and try to be quiet for a few moments, and then----"

He stooped to bend his ear to her lips which were moving faintly.

"He'll come directly," he answered, though he did not hear her;
"--directly. It's all right."

And then he stroked her hair again because he knew not what else to do,
seeing, as he did, that the end was so very near, and that no earthly
power, however far beyond his own poor efforts, could ward it off.

Just at that moment the door opened and the man came in.

That he too read the awful truth at his first glance, Tom saw. All
attempts at disguise had dropped aw