There was no escape from Helen’s eyes. He prayed that she had not seen that his were shut when he kissed her son—it was his only concession to himself. With another pat or two of the small fist he stood up by the bedside, bracing his knees against the rail that he might stand steadily. The fever was not yet gone from Helen’s eyes. She had smiled when he caressed the boy, but she was yet expectant. On her father’s verdict hung all her hopes, and his face for once in her life she was unable to read. She was vaguely uneasy. His manner was inscrutable, and she had never seen him look just like that. Their eyes met, and the unconscious pleading in hers would have wrung any verdict from him. "He’s a fine boy, isn’t he, little woman? ... So strong and healthy looking.... Shakes hands as if he meant it.... And he looks somewhat like you, missy. That will be the making of him.... But I must go now,"—and he went rather precipitately. "And will you hurry back to us, daddy?" Helen called to him. "Yes, child; I’ll hurry back," he answered,—as he hurried away. His secretary handed him a telegram. He took the yellow envelope and, without so much as glancing at it, went into the library and shut the door. * * * * * Very late in the afternoon the library door was opened, without invitation from within. Mr. Phillips was sitting in a chair with his arms upon his desk and his face upon his arm—dead. [Illustration: "HIS ARMS UPON HIS DESK AND HIS FACE UPON HIS ARM—DEAD."] *CHAPTER XXXVIII* Again, and of necessity, is the reader cited to the newspapers of the time. It is not meet that the passing of a chief magistrate of this nation should be passed over quickly or lightly in any history. The people stopped to mourn, to cast up his life in total, and pay respect to its multiplied excellences, to study his virtues as if in hope to reincarnate them, and to glory in his life as a common possession of his country. And yet this narrative may not pause to pay befitting tribute to him, nor to detail the tides of grief that swept the hearts of his countrymen with his outgoing, or the stateliness and grandeur of the ceremonies with which they committed his body to the ground. We may not here give the comprehensive view, for our canvas is not broad enough. Let it be said only that he died as he had lived: a gentleman brave and tender,—honest to his undoing, but dead without having known defeat,—faithful to his love for Helen even to the death, yet making no plaint against love. The physicians ascribed the President’s death to heart failure,—which meant little more than that he was dead. They ventured to say that the heart failure had been superinduced by overwork. This verdict doubtless would have stood if a newspaper man the first at Hill-Top had not chanced to hear of a telegram.