Then he spoke to her father, who had fallen back, and was faintly gazing, wondering what the stoppage was. “Sir, I am not worthy of her. God knows how I love her. She is too good for me.” Bull Garnet gathered his fleeting life, and looked at Pell with a love so deep that it banished admiration. Then his failing heart supplied, for the last, last time of all, the woe–worn fountain of his eyes. Strong and violent as he was, a little thing had often touched him to the turn of tears. What impulse is there but has this end? Even comic laughter. Pell lifted from the counterpane the broad but shrunken hand, which was on the way to be offered to him, until sad memory stopped it. Then he looked down at the poor grey face, where the forehead, from the fall of the rest, appeared almost a monstrosity, and the waning of strong emotions left a quivering of hollowness. The young parson looked down with noble pity. Much he knew of his father–in–law! Bull Garnet would never be pitied. He drew his hand back with a little jerk, and placed it against his broad, square chin. “I canʼt bear to die like this, Pell. _I wish to God you could shave me._” Pell went suddenly down on his knees, put his strong brown hands up, and said nothing except the Lordʼs Prayer. Bull Garnet tried to raise his palms, but the power of his wrists was gone, and so he let them fall together. Then at every grand petition he nodded at the ceiling, as if he saw it going upward, and thought of the lath and plaster. He had said he should die at four oʼclock, for the paroxysms of heart–complaint returned at measured intervals, and he felt that he could not outlast another. So with his usual mastery and economy of labour, he had sent a man to get the keys and begin to toll the great church bell, as soon as ever the clock struck four. “Not too long apart,” he said, “steadily, and be done with it.” When the boom of the sluggish bell came in at the open window, Bull Garnet smiled, because the man was doing it as he had ordered him. “Right,” he whispered, “yes, quite right. I have always been before my time. Just let me see my children.” And then he had no more pain. * * * * * Amy came in very softly, to know if he was dead. They had told her she ought to leave it alone, but she could not see it so. Knowing all and feeling all, she felt beyond her knowledge. If it would—oh, if it would help him with a spark of hope in his parting, help him in the judgment–day, to have the glad forgiveness of the brother with the deeper wrong—there it was, and he was welcome. A little whispering went on, pale lips into trembling ears, and then Cradock, with his shoes off, was brought to the side of the bed. “He wonʼt know you,” Pearl sobbed softly; “but how kind of you to come!” She was surprised at nothing now.