The stars were shining, the
ground was as hard as stone beneath his tread, the oxen labored on
slowly, it seemed as if he would never get home. His mother would have a
hot supper for him, and the boys would ask what the news was, and what
he had seen, and his little sister would ask if he had bought that piece
of ginger bread for her. He stirred and the papers rustled in his fingers
and there was a harsh sound somewhere as of a bolt grating, and his cell
was small and the bed so narrow, so narrow and so hard, and he was
suffocating and could not get out.
"Papa! papa! It's an hour," whispered a voice in his ear. The eyelids
quivered, the eyes looked straight at her but did not see her.
"Ah Sing! Ah Sing! Get me to bed!" he groaned.
Frightened at the expression of his face the child ran to call Nurse and
her father's man, Ah Sing. Nurse kept her out of her father's chamber all
that day, but she begged for her letter and Nurse gave it to her. She
carried it in her hand that day and the next, at night keeping it under
her pillow.
Before many days the strange uncle came and he led her in to her father
and let her kiss his hand, and afterward he read Aunt Prue's soiled
letter to her and told her that she and Nurse were going to Aunt Prue's
home next week.
"Won't you go, too?" she asked, clinging to him as no one had ever clung
to him before.
"No, I must stay here all winter--I shall come to you some time."
She sobbed herself to sleep in his arms, with the letter held fast in her
hand; he laid her on her bed, pressing his lips to her warm, wet face,
and then went down and out on the beach, pacing up and down until the
dawn was in the sky.
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