In an instant Clarice and Paul and the doctors were on their feet, stupefied with what they heard and the sight of Elithe kneeling by Jack Percy and calling him Mr. Pennington. Very slowly Jack’s eyes opened and turned towards her with a look of ineffable tenderness which each one in the room noticed. Then they closed again, as if the effort to keep them open were too great, and, moving his hand very slowly towards her, he whispered, faintly: “Elithe.” What did it mean, and where had she known this man whom she called Mr. Pennington, and who, at the sound of her voice, roused as nothing had been able to rouse him, Miss Hansford thought, as she watched the strange proceeding. “Speak to him again. You may save him,” the doctor said. With this incentive Elithe spoke again: “Mr. Pennington, do you hear me? I am Elithe. Do you know me? Try to live. You must not die.” Unconsciously she was pleading for Paul more than for the life ebbing so fast. Nothing could save that, and the pallor of death was already spreading itself over the face, which moved a little in response to her appeal. The eyes opened again,—more filmy and dim than when they looked at her before. Around the lips there was a pitiful kind of smile as he said: “Elithe, the harvest is being reaped, and such a harvest! You tried to make it a better one. They all tried. Tell them I am sorry, and wish I had never left the Gulch. Tell Clarice——” Here he stopped, while Clarice sprang forward on the other side of him and said: “Jack! Jack! I am here,—Clarice. Speak to me. What is it you want Elithe to tell me?” Jack did not reply. His dulled ear had caught only the word Elithe, which he repeated again. “Ask him who did it?” one of the doctors said, and in an instant Elithe stiffened, while her aunt stood more erect and listened. “Can I ask him and run the risk of his answer?” Elithe thought, deciding that she would not. Lifting her tear-stained face, she shook her head and said: “I cannot.” “Then I will,” and, bending close to Jack, the physician shrieked in his ear: “Who did it? Who shot you?” Both Paul and Clarice thought this a useless question to ask one who shot himself, but Jack did not reply even if he understood. “Thank God!” came from under Miss Hansford’s breath, as Jack made no sign that he had heard, or sign of any sort for several minutes, when there was the faintest possible whisper: “Elithe, I tried my best and failed.” They were his last words, and Elithe felt the hand she held growing colder and clammier as the minutes went by, and there was no sound in the room but the ticking of the clock on the mantel and the labored breathing, which grew more and more labored and slow until, just as the day was breaking over the sea and the white sails were coming into sight, it ceased entirely and Jack was dead.