August and September passed, and still the master of Oaklands lay helpless, while fever raged in his gaunt frame with unrelenting violence. One thing was constantly denied him, fresh, cold water; although he pleaded with such pitiful agony that his nurses wept when they refused him. In delirium he talked of the old spring at his far-away childhood home--of the babbling music of the water as it sparkled over its pebbly bed and trickled down the rocky hillside--and again and again he pleaded for one draught of its reviving freshness. "Water! water!" was the burden of his plaint from morn till night, and from night till morn; and when too weak to speak, his hollow, bloodshot eyes still begged for water. Finally he was given up to die. "He can not last through the night," was the verdict of the two physicians to the mourning ones around the bedside. His fainting wife was carried from the room; and his daughter, not able to endure the sight of his dying agonies, allowed her husband to lead her to her old room, where she threw herself across her bed in a paroxysm of grief. "Oh, father, father, my poor, dear old father!" she wailed, "if only you could speak to me again before you die, and tell me that you forgive me and love me. And my brothers, so far away! Oh, if you could be with us in this dark hour! It is so hard, so hard!" The doctors had left. Aunt Dilsey was upstairs in attendance upon her stricken mistress. The night wore on, and when the gray dawn was just beginning to creep into the chamber where Hiram Gilcrest lay unconscious and scarcely breathing, Mason Rogers and John Trabue, worn out with their long night's vigil, stole into an adjoining room to snatch an hour's rest. Only Abner Logan and William Bledsoe were left in attendance upon the dying man. Presently he opened his eyes and fixed his gaze on Abner. "Do you know me, Mr. Gilcrest?" asked Logan, tenderly touching the shrunken, parched hands. "Water! water!" was the reply; "for God's sake give me water! Have mercy, and let me have one drop before I die!" "You shall have it, sir," said Abner, his eyes filling. Then, to a negro boy who was just entering the room, he cried, "Run quickly to the spring-house, and fetch a bucket of water." "Are you not rash, Logan?" whispered Bledsoe. "You know the doctors have all along forbidden that." "But they have pronounced him dying; in any case the water can make no difference, and I can not resist his plea any longer."