He was like a prisoner, making faint half distinguishable gestures beyond the bars of his prison--questions on which deliverance might depend, but which the watchers could not understand. Presently the efforts increased, the powerless ashy old hand which lay on the coverlet, all the fingers in a helpless heap together, began to flicker in vague movement. Old Trevor’s eyes had not been remarkable for any force of expression, for nothing indeed, save for the keenness of his seeing when he was well. They had been small and sharp, and of a reddish gray, with puckered eyelids, making them smaller than they were by nature. Now they seemed to stand out enlarged and clear, and full of a spiritual force, which was partly weakness and partly the feverish dumb impotence of a desire to which he could not give words. They all gathered closely round, as anxious and not less helpless than he. Lucy in her inexperience was driven desperate by this crisis. She knelt down by the bedside, speaking to him wildly, clasping her hands, and beseeching, “What is it? What is it? Oh, papa, what is it? Try and speak to me,” she cried. This hopeless kind of interrogation went on for some time without any result, and they had all subsided again into the quietness of despair, when Lucy was suddenly enlightened by a movement of the old man’s crumpled fingers, which he had managed to curve as if holding a pen. “He wants to write,” she said, hurrying to find a pencil and paper, but these were rejected by an indignant gleam from the sufferer’s eyes. “It is pen and ink he wants,” Lucy cried in desperation, yet tidy still; “dear papa, this will be easier, and will not make stains; not that! Oh, what is it, then you want? what is it he wants? can no one guess what it is?” “It is of no use,” said Ford; “he wants to write, but he can’t, that’s the whole matter: he has something to tell us, but he can’t. It’s the will, he has never signed the will. Doctor, is he fit? would it be any good?” The doctor had just come in, and stood shaking his head. “Let him try,” he said; “I suppose it can’t do any harm, at least.”