Presently, watching, as I ate, the weak restless movements of the hand upon the quilt, a thought occurred to me, which then and there I resolved to put into practice. It was evident that, unless through an unexpected renewal of strength, those dying fingers would never succeed in forming a legible word with the pencil they could barely hold. But they could make a sign of themselves and that little power I must seek to direct. I hurried down to the kitchen and seized from the wall an ancient bone tablet that Peggy used for domestic memoranda. Scraping a little soot from the chimney I mixed it with water into a thick paste and spread a thin layer of the latter over the surface of the tablet. It dried almost immediately, and writing on it with the tip of my finger, I found that the soot came readily away, leaving the mark I had made stenciled white and clear under the upper coating. Returning to my father, with this extemporized first principle and the saucer of black paste, I held the tablet before his dim, wandering eyes, and wrote on it with my finger, demonstrating the method. At first he hardly seemed to comprehend my meaning, but, after a repetition or two his glance concentrated and his forehead seemed to ripple into little wrinkles of intelligence. At that I smeared the surface of the bone afresh, waited a minute for it to dry, and placed it under his hand upon the bed, leaving him to evolve the method from his poor crippled inner consciousness. But a few moments had elapsed when a small, low sound from the bed brought me to my father’s side. He looked from me to the tablet, where it lay, and there was a strained imploring line between his eyes. Gently I took up the little black square and I saw that something was formed on it. With infinite toil, for it was only his left hand he could use, he had scratched on it a single, straggling word, and in the fading light I read it: “Forgive.” “Father!” I cried; “is that what you have been striving to say?” He dragged up his unstricken arm slowly into an attitude as if the hand sought its fellow to join it in a prayer to me. “Before God,” I said, “you wrong me to think I could say that word! What have I to forgive you for? My sins have been my own, and they have met with their just reward. Am I to forgive you for loving me? Dad--dad! I have known so little love that I can’t afford to wrong yours by a thought. Look! I will blot this out, that you may know my heart has nothing but tenderness in it for you!” I snatched up the tablet and smeared out the cruel word and placed the blank surface under his hand again. He was looking at me all the time with the same dim anguished expression, and now his head sunk back on the pillow and a tear rolled down his face.