sat listening
to the clocks from the steeples all about us, I amused myself with
planning Robert's future, as I often did my own, and had dealt out to
him a generous hand of trumps wherewith to play this game of life which
hitherto had gone so cruelly against him, when a harsh, choked voice
called,--

"Lucy!"

It was the captain, and some new terror seemed to have gifted him with
momentary strength.

"Yes, here's Lucy," I answered, hoping that by following the fancy I
might quiet him,--for his face was damp with the clammy moisture, and
his frame shaken with the nervous tremor that so often precedes death.
His dull eye fixed upon me, dilating with a bewildered look of
incredulity and wrath, till he broke out fiercely.--

"That's a lie! she's dead,--and so's Bob, damn him!"

Finding speech a failure, I began to sing the quiet tune that had often
soothed delirium like this; but hardly had the line,

"See gentle patience smile on pain,"

passed my lips, when he clutched me by the wrist, whispering like one
in mortal fear,--

"Hush! she used to sing that way to Bob, but she never would to me. I
swore I'd whip the Devil out of her, and I did; but you know before she
cut her throat she said she'd haunt me, and there she is!"

He pointed behind me with an aspect of such pale dismay, that I
involuntarily glanced over my shoulder and started as if I had seen a
veritable ghost; for, peering from the gloom of that inner room, I saw
a shadowy face, with dark hair all about it, and a glimpse of scarlet
at the throat. An instant showed me that it was only Robert leaning
from his bed's-foot, wrapped in a gray army-blanket, with his red shirt
just visible above it, and his long hair disordered by sleep. But what
a strange expression was on his face! The unmarred side was toward me,
fixed and motionless as when I first observed it,--less absorbed now,
but more intent. His eye glittered, his lips were apart like one who
listened with every sense, and his whole aspect reminded me of a hound
to which some wind had brought the scent of unsuspected prey.

"Do you know him, Robert? Does he mean you?"

"Lord, no, Ma'am; they all own half a dozen Bobs: but hearin' my name
woke me; that's all."

He spoke quite naturally, and lay down again, while I returned to my
charge, thinking that this paroxysm was probably his last. But by
another hour I perceived a hopeful change, for the tremor had subsided,
the cold dew was gone,