Ten days he lay there,--a swift week and three endless
days, wasting, wasting away. Cheerily the mother nursed him
the first days, and laughed into the little eyes that smiled
again. Tenderly then she hovered round him, till the smile
fled away and Fear crouched beside the little bed.
Then the day ended not, and night was a dreamless terror,
and joy and sleep slipped away. I hear now that Voice at
midnight calling me from dull and dreamless trance,--crying,
"The Shadow of Death! The Shadow of Death!" Out into the
starlight I crept, to rouse the gray physician,--the Shadow of
Death, the Shadow of Death. The hours trembled on; the
night listened; the ghastly dawn glided like a tired thing
across the lamplight. Then we two alone looked upon the
child as he turned toward us with great eyes, and stretched his
stringlike hands,--the Shadow of Death! And we spoke no
word, and turned away.
He died at eventide, when the sun lay like a brooding
sorrow above the western hills, veiling its face; when the
winds spoke not, and the trees, the great green trees he loved,
stood motionless. I saw his breath beat quicker and quicker,
pause, and then his little soul leapt like a star that travels in
the night and left a world of darkness in its train.
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