Milton was much alarmed at the terrible change, for the last time he had seen him he had towered above him, laughingly threatening to "warm his jacket," and now here he sat, a great hulk of flesh, his mind flickering and flaring under every wind of suggestion, soon to go out altogether. In reply to questions he only muttered with a trace of his old spirit: "I'm all right. Jest as good a man as I ever was, only I'm cold. I'll be all right when spring comes, so 't I c'n git outdoors. Somethin' to warm me up, yessir; I'm cold, that's all." The young fellow sat in awe before him, but the old wife and Bill moved about the room, taking very little interest in what the old man said or did. Bill at last took down the violin. "I'll wake him up," he said. "This always fetches the old feller. Now watch 'im." "Oh, don't do that!" Milton said in horror. But Bill drew the bow across the strings with the same stroke that Daddy always used when tuning up. He lifted his head as Bill dashed into "Honest John," in spite of Milton's protest. He trotted his feet after a little and drummed with his hands on the arms of his chair, then smiled a little in a pitiful way. Finally he reached out his right hand for the violin and took it into his lap. He tried to hold the neck with his poor, old, mutilated left hand, and burst into tears. "Don't you do that again, Bill," Milton said. "It's better for him to forget that. Now you take the best care of him you can to-night. I don't think he's going to live long; I think you ought to go for the doctor right off." "Oh, he's been like this for the last two weeks; he ain't sick, he's jest old, that's all," replied Bill, brutally. And the old lady, moving about without passion and without speech, seemed to confirm this; and yet Milton was unable to get the picture of the old man out of his mind. He went home with a great lump in his throat. * * * * * The next morning, while they were at breakfast, Bill burst wildly into the room. "Come over there, all of you; we want you." They all looked up much scared. "What's the matter, Bill?" "Daddy's killed himself," said Bill, and turned to rush back, followed by Mr. Jennings and Milton. While on the way across the field Bill told how it all happened. "He wouldn't go to bed, the old lady couldn't make him, and when I got up this morning I didn't think nothin' about it. I s'posed, of course, he'd gone to bed all right; but when I was going out to the barn I stumbled across something in the snow, and I felt around, and there he was. He got hold of my revolver someway. It was on the shelf by the washstand, and I s'pose he went out there so 't we wouldn't hear him. I dassn't touch him," he said, with a shiver; "and the old woman, she jest slumped down in a chair an' set there--wouldn't do a thing--so I come over to see you."