When she crossed the threshold of the cabin, her master pointed to a small faintly moving bundle lying at the foot of the bed over which he was bending. "Take it into the other room and tell the man to come here," he said. "There's no time to lose." He still held the weak hand; but the girl's eyes were no longer closed; they were open and fixed on his face. The great fellow was trembling like a leaf. The past hour had been almost more than he could bear. He was entirely unstrung. "I wasn't cut out for this kind of thing," he had groaned more than once, and for the first time in his life thanked Fate for making him a failure. As he looked down at his patient, a mist rose before his eyes, blurring his sight, and he hurriedly brushed it away. She was perhaps nineteen years old, and had the very young look a simple trusting nature and innocent untried life bring. She was small, fragile, and fair, with the pure fairness born of a cold climate. Her large blue-gray eyes had in them the piteous appeal sometimes to be seen in the eyes of a timid child. Tom had laid his big hand on her forehead and stroked it, scarcely knowing what he did. "Don't be frightened," he said, with a tremor in his voice. "Close your eyes and try to be quiet for a few moments, and then----" He stooped to bend his ear to her lips which were moving faintly. "He'll come directly," he answered, though he did not hear her; "--directly. It's all right." And then he stroked her hair again because he knew not what else to do, seeing, as he did, that the end was so very near, and that no earthly power, however far beyond his own poor efforts, could ward it off. Just at that moment the door opened and the man came in. That he too read the awful truth at his first glance, Tom saw. All attempts at disguise had dropped away. His thin, scholarly face was as colourless as the fairer one on the pillow, his brows were knit into rigid lines and his lips were working. He approached the bed, and for a few moments stood looking down as if trying to give himself time to gain self-control. Tom saw the girl's soft eyes fixed in anguished entreaty; there was a struggle, and from the slowly moving lips came a few faint and broken words. "Death!--They--never know." The man flung himself upon his knees and burst into an agony of such weeping that, seeing it, Tom turned away shuddering. "No," he said, "they will never know, they who loved you--who loved you--will never know! God forgive me if I have done wrong. I have been false that they might be spared. God forgive me for the sin!" The poor child shivered; she had become still paler, and the breath came in sharp little puffs through her nostrils. "God--God!--God!" she panted. But the man did not seem to hear her. He was praying aloud, a struggling, disjointed prayer. "O God of sinners," he cried, "Thou who forgivest, Thou who hast died, forgive--forgive in this hour of death!"