"O boys, boys, _boys_! If you don't work faster you won't finish the field to-day. Look how low the sun is!... I am going to the house. They can't finish the field to-day. Let them do what they can, but don't let them work late. I want Peter to go to the house with me. Tell him to come on."... In the faint gray of the morning, Peter, who had been watching by the bedside all night, stole out of the room, and going into the garden pulled a handful of pinks--a thing he had never done before--and, re-entering the colonel's bedroom, put them in a vase near his sleeping face. Soon afterwards the colonel opened his eyes and looked around him. At the foot of the bed stood Peter, and on one side sat the physician and a friend. The night-lamp burned low, and through the folds of the curtains came the white light of early day. "Put out the lamp and open the curtains," he said, feebly. "It's day." When they had drawn the curtains aside, his eyes fell on the pinks, sweet and fresh with the dew on them. He stretched out his hand and touched them caressingly, and his eyes sought Peter's with a look of grateful understanding. "I want to be alone with Peter for a while," he said, turning his face towards the others. When they were left alone, it was some minutes before anything was said. Peter, not knowing what he did, but knowing what was coming, had gone to the window and hid himself behind the curtains, drawing them tightly around his form as though to shroud himself from sorrow. At length the colonel said, "Come here!" Peter, almost staggering forward, fell at the foot of the bed, and, clasping the colonel's feet with one arm, pressed his cheek against them. "Come closer!" Peter crept on his knees and buried his head on the colonel's thigh. "Come up here--_closer_;" and putting one arm around Peter's neck he laid the other hand softly on his head, and looked long and tenderly into his eyes. "I've got to leave you, Peter. Don't you feel sorry for me?" "Oh, Marse Rom!" cried Peter, hiding his face, his whole form shaken by sobs. "Peter," added, the colonel with ineffable gentleness, "if I had served my Master as faithfully as you have served yours, I should not feel ashamed to stand in his presence." "If my Marseter is ez mussiful to me ez you have been--" "I have fixed things so that you will be comfortable after I am gone. When your time comes, I should like you to be laid close to me. We can take the long sleep together. Are you willing?" "That's whar I want to be laid." The colonel stretched out his hand to the vase, and taking the bunch of pinks, said very calmly: "Leave these in my hand; I'll carry them with me." A moment more, and he added: "If I shouldn't wake up any more, good-bye, Peter!" "Good-bye, Marse Rom!"