I agreed with him and asked carelessly what year that was and what he was doing in Paris, but he affected not to hear me and went on with his hammering, remarking that the oysters were running so small that some slipped through his tongs and he was getting too old to rake for them twice.  It was only a glimpse of some part of his past, but it was all I could get.  He never referred to it again.

December of that year was unusually severe.  The snow fell early and the river was closed before Christmas.  This shut off all communication with the Brockways except by the roundabout way I had first followed, over the hills from the west.  So my weekly tramps ceased.

Late in the following February I heard, through Dan the brakeman, that the old man was greatly broken and had not been out of the Hulk for weeks.  I started at once to see him.  The ice was adrift and running with the tide, and the passage across was made doubly difficult by the floating cakes shelved one upon the other.  When I reached the Hulk, the only sign of life was the thin curl of smoke from the rusty pipe.  Even the snow of the night before lay unbroken on the bridge, showing that no foot had crossed it that morning.  I knocked, and Emily opened the door.

“Oh, it’s the painter, grandpa!  We thought it might be the doctor.”

He was sitting in an armchair by the fire, wrapped in a blanket.  Holding out his hand, he motioned to a chair and said feebly:—­

“How did you hear?”

“The brakeman told me.”

“Yes, Dan knows.  He comes over Sundays.”

He was greatly changed,—­his skin drawn and shrunken,—­his grizzled beard, once so great a contrast to his ruddy skin, only added to the pallor of his face.  He had had a slight “stroke,” he thought.  It had passed off, but left him very weak.

I sat down and, to change the current of his thoughts, told him of the river outside, and the shelving ice, of my life since I had seen him, and whatever I thought would interest him.  He made no reply, except in monosyllables, his head buried in his hands.  Soon the afternoon light faded, and I rose to go.  Then he roused himself, threw the blanket from his shoulders and said in something of his old voice:—­

“Don’t leave me.  Do you hear?  Don’t leave me!” this was with an authoritative gesture.  Then, his voice faltering and with almost a tender tone, “Please help me through this.  My strength is almost gone.”

Later, when the night closed in, he called Emily to him, pushed her hair back and, kissing her forehead, said:—­

“Now go to bed, little Frowsy-head.  The painter will stay with me.”

I filled his pipe, threw some dry driftwood in the stove, and drew my chair nearer.  He tried to smoke for a moment, but laid his pipe down.  For some minutes he kept his eyes on the crackling wood; then, reaching his hand out, laid it on my arm and said slowly:—­