In this darkness and this hurricane no
man can keep the path across the heath. Gabriel, I am dying--I
should be dead before you got back. Gabriel, for the love of the
Blessed Virgin, stop here with me till I die--my time is short--I
have a terrible secret that I must tell to somebody before I draw
my last breath! Your ear to my mouth--quick! quick!"
As he spoke the last words, a slight noise was audible on the
other side of the partition, the door half opened, and Perrine
appeared at it, looking affrightedly into the room. The vigilant
eyes of the old man--suspicious even in death--caught sight of
her directly.
"Go back!" he exclaimed faintly, before she could utter a word;
"go back--push her back, Gabriel, and nail down the latch in the
door, if she won't shut it of herself!"
"Dear Perrine! go in again," implored Gabriel. "Go in, and keep
the children from disturbing us. You will only make him
worse--you can be of no use here!"
She obeyed without speaking, and shut the door again.
While the old man clutched him by the arm, and repeated, "Quick!
quick! your ear close to my mouth," Gabriel heard her say to the
children (who were both awake), "Let us pray for grandfather."
And as he knelt down by the bedside, there stole on his ear the
sweet, childish tones of his little sisters, and the soft,
subdued voice of the young girl who was teaching them the prayer,
mingling divinely with the solemn wailing of wind and sea, rising
in a still and awful purity over the hoarse, gasping whispers of
the dying man.
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