met the young hospital surgeon, going
back to his ambulance.

"You his folks?" he inquired. "Sorry to tell you so, but I can't do any
good. Sunstroke, I suppose--may have been something else--but it's
collapse now, and no mistake. You take charge, sir?" he finished,
addressing Rand.

Jacob Dolph was lying on his back in the bare front room on the first
floor. His daughter fell on her knees by his side, and made as though
she would throw her arms around him; but, looking in his face, she saw
death quietly coming upon him, and she only bent down and kissed him,
while her tears wet his brow.

Meanwhile a tall Southerner, with hair halfway down his neck, and
kindly eyes that moved in unison with his broad gestures, was talking to
Rand.

[Illustration]

"I met the ol' gentleman in the French _cafe_, neah heah," he said, "and
he was jus' honing to have me come up and see his house, seh--house he
used to have. Well, I came right along, an' when we got here, sure
'nough, they's taihin' down that house. Neveh felt so bad in all my
life, seh. He wasn't expectin' of it, and I 'lowed 'twuz his old home
like, and he was right hahd hit, fo' a fact. He said to me, 'Good-day,
seh,' sezee; 'good-day, seh,' he says to me, an' then he starts across
the street, an' first thing I know, he falls down flat on his face, seh.
Saw that theah brick an' mortar comin' down, an' fell flat on his face.
This hyeh pill-man 'lowed 'twuz sunstroke; but a Southern man like I am
don't need to be told what a gentleman's feelings are when he sees his
house a-torn down--no, seh. If you ever down oweh way, seh, I'd be right
glad----"

But Rand had lifted Edith from the floor, for her father would know her
no more, and had passed out of this world, unconscious of all the
squalor and ruin about him; and the poor girl was sobbing on his
shoulder.

He was very tender with her, very sorry for her--but he had never known
the walls that fell across the way; he was a young man, an artist, with
a great future before him, and the world was young to him, and she was
to be his wife.

Still, looking down, he saw that sweetly calm, listening look, that
makes beautiful the faces of the dead, come over the face of Jacob
Dolph, as though he, lying there, heard the hammers of the workmen
breaking down his father's house, brick by brick--and yet the sound
could no longer jar upon his ear or grieve his gentle spirit.

[Illustration]

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