, bowed to the bottle
and said: "Dew of an ancient mountain, your servant, sir." And old Gid,
with his mouth solemnly set, but with his eyes still bulging, arose,
folded his arms, bowed with deep reverence, and thus paid his respects:
"Sunshine, gathered from the slopes of long ago, your slave."

Mrs. Cranceford stepped in to look for something, and the play
improvised by these two old boys was broken short off. The Major sat
down, but Gid edged up nearer the table as if preparing to snatch the
bottle. Upon the odd-shaped flask she cast a look of passing interest,
and speaking to the Major she said:

"Oh, that's the whisky you got from Memphis. Don't drink it all, please.
I want to fill up the camphor bottle----"

Gid sat down with a jolt that jarred the windows, and she looked at him
in alarm, fearing at the instant that death must have aimed a blow at
him. "Camphor bottle!" he gasped. "Merciful heavens, ma'am,' fill up
your camphor bottle with my heart's blood!"

At this distress the Major laughed, though more in sympathy than in
mirth; and Mrs. Cranceford simply smiled as if with loathness she
recognized that there was cause for merriment, but when she had quitted
the room and gone to her own apartment, she sat down, and with the
picture in her mind, laughed in mischievous delight.

"Help yourself," said the Major. Gid had spread his hands over the
whisky as if to warm them in this liquidized soul of the past.

"Pour it out for me, John. And I will turn my back so as not to see how
much you pour."

"Go ahead," the Major insisted.

"But I am shaken with that suggested profanation, that camphor bottle,
and I'm afraid that I might spill a drop. But wait. I am also bold and
will attempt it. Gods, look at that--a shredded sunbeam."

"Don't be afraid of it."

"I was waiting for you to say that, John. But it is reverence, and not
fear. That I should have lived to see this day is a miracle. Shall I
pour yours? There you are."

They stood facing each other. With one hand Gid held high his glass, and
with the other hand he pressed his heart. Their glasses clinked, and
then they touched the liquor with their lips, sipped it, and Gid
stretched his neck like a chicken. To have spoken, to have smacked his
mouth, would have been profane. There is true reverence in nothing save
silence, and in silence they stood. Gid was the first to speak, not that
he had less reverence, but that he had more to say and felt, therefore,