"Stanning said, 'I had the luck to buy that in a pawnshop in Blackhampton long after he was dead, and if I had had a boy of my own I should like him to have kept it as an heirloom, but as I have not I want you to take it, Auntie, because I know you'll appreciate it.' Somehow, I could tell from the way he spoke that he was done. I hadn't the heart to refuse it, although I hadn't a boy or a girl of my own neither." A huskiness in the Corporal's throat made it hard to go on for a moment. "'I'm only thirty-nine,' he said, 'and all the best is in me. I don't fancy having my light put out like this in a wet bog, but it's got to come, my dear. I hate to think that sometime to-morrow I shall be as if I had never been.' 'Not you,' I said. 'You're sickening for the fever.' But I couldn't move him. He'd got the hoo-doo. 'No use talking about it,' he said, 'but you and I'll never have that day's fishing in Corfield Weir. I should like you to have seen my cottage up at Dibley. It's got the ghost of that old boy.' He put his hand on the watch, Mother, just like this. 'If there is a heaven for dead painters, and I doubt it, I'd like to sit in John Torrington's corner on his right hand. You see, I've learned all sorts of things, living in his house. I was getting to know the lights on the Sharrow and the feel of the clouds--in all the great Torringtons the clouds feel like velvet--and he was going to show me the way to handle sunlight--I've already been twice across to New York to see "An Afternoon in July in the Valley of the Sharrow," the most wonderful thing of its kind in existence. You get the view from my cottage--his cottage--at Dibley. I should like you to have seen it, Auntie. And then I should like to have taken you across to New York to show you what old John made of it. Fancy having to go all the way to New York to look at it. So like us to be caught on the hop, in the things that really matter.' I give you my word, Mother, he raised a laugh even then, but of a sudden his voice went all queer-like. 'However,' he said, 'there's a Mind in this that knows more than we do.' Then the lad began to shiver just as if he had the ague. And the next day, about the same time, or mayhap the perishin' old sun had gone a bit more west, I had to go out across No Man's Land to bring him in ... what there was left of him."