"Would you like me to stay?" he asked, kindly.

Lee swallowed hard, and winked fast to keep back the tears.

"Everybody else is strangers," he said, with his lip trembling.

David put his arm around him caressingly. His sympathies went out strongly to the little lad, who might so soon be left fatherless.

"Then I'll come back and stay with you till you go to sleep, after I take Miss Hallam home," he promised.

CHAPTER XIII.

A LITTLE PRODIGAL.

LEE was waiting disconsolately on the stairs, with Taffy beside him, when David opened the door and stepped into the hall. The landlady was up-stairs with the nurse, and all the boarders had gone to a concert, so the parlor was vacant, and David took the boy in there. He gave him an intricate chain-puzzle to work first, and afterward told him such entertaining stories of his travels that Lee forgot his painful forebodings. The clock in the hall struck ten before either of them was aware how swiftly the time had pa.s.sed.

"Here's a little fellow who doesn't know where he is to sleep," David said to the nurse, when they had noiselessly entered Dr. Trent's room.

"We'll cover him up warm on the sofa," she said, kindly. "He'd better not undress."

David looked quickly across to the bed. "Is there any change?" he asked, anxiously.

She nodded, and then motioned him aside. "Would it be too much to ask you to stay a couple of hours longer, until Dr. Mills comes? Lee clings to you so, and the end may be much nearer than we thought."

"If I can be of any use, I'll stay very willingly," he replied.

They moved the sofa to the other side of the room, and the nurse began folding some blankets the landlady brought her to lay over it.

"Can't you put some more coal on the fire, dear?" she asked Lee.

He picked up a larger lump than he could well manage. The tongs slipped, and it fell with a great noise on the fender, breaking in pieces as it did so, then rattling over the hearth.

They all turned apprehensively toward the bed. The heavy jarring sound had thoroughly aroused Dr. Trent from his stupor. He looked around the room as if trying to comprehend the situation. He seemed puzzled to account for David's presence in the room, and drew his hand wonderingly across his burning forehead, then pressed it against his aching throat.

The nurse bent over him to moisten his parched lips with a spoonful of water.

Then he understood. A look of awe stole over his face, as he realized his condition. He held his hand out towards Lee, and the nurse, turning, beckoned the child to come. He folded the cold, trembling little fingers in his hot hands. "Papa's--dear--little son!" he gasped in whispers.

David turned his head away, his eyes suffused with hot tears. The scene recalled so vividly the night he had crept to his father's bedside for the last time. His heart ached for the little fellow.

"G.o.d--keep--you!" came in the same hoa.r.s.e whisper.

Then he turned to the nurse, and with great effort spoke aloud, "Belle, pray!"

David, standing with bowed head, while she knelt with her arm around the frightened boy, listened to such a prayer as he had never heard before.

He had wondered one time how this woman could sacrifice everything in life for the sake of a man who died so many centuries ago. But as he listened now, to her low, earnest voice, he felt an unseen Presence in the room, as of the Christ to whom she spoke so confidingly.

As she prayed that the Everlasting Arms might be underneath as this soul went down into the "valley of the shadow," the doctor cried out exultingly, "There is no valley!"

David looked up. The doctor's worn face was shining with an unspeakable happiness. He stretched out his arms.

"Jesus saves me! O, the wonder of it!"

His hands dropped. Gradually his eyes closed, and he relapsed into a stupor, from which he never aroused. When Dr. Mills came at midnight he was still breathing; but the street lights were beginning to fade in the gray, wintry dawn when Belle Carleton reverently laid the lifeless hands across the still heart, and turned to look at Lee.

The child had sobbed himself to sleep on the sofa, and David had gone.

O, the pity of it, that we keep the heart's-ease of our appreciation to wreathe cold coffin-lids, and cover unresponsive clay!

There was a constant stream of people pa.s.sing in and out of the boarding-house parlor all day.

Bethany was not surprised at the great number who came to do honor to Baxter Trent, nor at the tearful accounts of his helpful ministrations from those he had befriended. But as she arranged the great ma.s.ses of flowers they brought, she thought sadly, "O, why didn't they send these when he was in such sore need of love and sympathy? Now it's too late to make any difference."

All sorts of people came. A man whose wrists had not yet forgotten the chafing of a convict's shackles, touched one of the lilies that Bethany had placed on the table at the head of the casket.

"He lived white!" the man said, shaking his head mournfully. "I reckon he was ready to go if ever any body was."

They happened to be alone in the room, and Bethany repeated what the nurse had told her of the doctor's triumphant pa.s.sing.

Late in the afternoon there was a timid knock at the door. Bethany opened it, and saw two little waifs holding each other's cold, red hands. One had a ragged shawl pinned over her head, and the other wore a big, flapping sunbonnet, turned back from her thin, pitiful face. Their teeth were chattering with cold and bashfulness.

"Missus," faltered the larger one, "we couldn't get no wreaves or crosses, but granny said he would like this ''cause it's so bright and gold-lookin'.'"

The dirty little hand held out a stemless, yellow chrysanthemum.

"Come in, dears," said Bethany softly, opening the door wide to the little ragam.u.f.fins.

They glanced around the ma.s.s of blossoms filling the room, with a look of astonishment that so much beauty could be found in one place.

"Jess," whispered the oldest one to her sister, "'Pears like our 'n don't show up for much, beside all these. I wisht he knowed we walked a mile through the snow to fetch it, and how sorry we was."

Bethany heard the disappointed whisper. "Did you know him well?" she asked.

"I should rather say," answered the child. "He kep' us from starvin', all the time granny was down sick so long."

"An' once he took me and Jess ridin' with him, away out in the country, and he let us get out in a field and pick lots of yellow flowers, something like this, only littler. Didn't he, Jess?"

The other child nodded, saying, as she wiped her eyes with the corner of her sister's shawl, "Granny says we'll never have another friend like him while the world stands."

Deeply touched, Bethany held up the stemless chrysanthemum. "See," she said, "I'm going to put it in the best place of all, right here by his hand."

The door opened again to admit David Herschel. Before it closed the children had slipped bashfully away, still hand in hand.