I was indeed very tired.  I could not assimilate the strange impressions I had received.  That night the moon-light streamed broadly into my window through the apple-boughs that showed black shadows on the floor.  About midnight I opened my eyes suddenly.  Mrs. Libby in a much-frilled night-dress was shaking my shoulder vigorously.

“You’ll have to get up.  Agnes Rayne’s dyin’, ‘n’ she’s took a notion to see you.  They’ve sent Hikeses’ boy after you; bleedin’ at the lungs is all I can get out of him.  The Hikeses are all dumb as a stick of cord-wood.”

She sat down heavily on my bed, and put a pillow comfortably to her back while I dressed.  Hikeses’ boy sat waiting for me in the porch whistling under his breath.  He was the tallest and lankiest of them all, and like some ghostly cicerone, he never spoke, but led the way through the dewy grass into the white, glorious moonlight, and kept a few yards ahead of me in the dusty road until we reached the Rayne farmhouse.

Through the windows I saw a dim light, and figures moving.  I pushed open the door without knocking.  A doctor, young and alert, had been summoned from the village, and the dull light from a kerosene lamp, set hastily on the table, touched his curly red hair as he knelt by the mattress.  An old white-bearded man sat huddled in one of the shadowy corners, weeping the tears of senility, and a tall, dust-colored woman, whom I rightly took to be Mrs. Hikes, stood stolidly watching the doctor.  Outside the crickets were singing cheerily in the wet grass.

“Oh, yes, so glad you’ve come,” murmured the doctor as he rose.

Then I stepped closer to the little figure lying in the old blue curtain, that was stiffened now with blood.  The parted lips were gray; the whole face, except the vivid eyes, was dead.  The night-dress was thrown back from the poor throat and chest, stained here and there with spots of crimson on the white skin, that seemed stretched over the small bones.  I stooped beside her, in answer to an appealing look.  She could not lift the frail, tired hand that lay by her, its fingers uncurled, the hand of one who, dying, relinquishes gladly its grasp on life.  The hands of the strong, torn from a world they love, clench and clutch at the last; it is an involuntary hold on earth.  The doctor moved away.  The whining sobs of the old man became more audible.  I put my ear to her cold lips.

“His letters ... the letters ... and ... my book ...  I told you of, take them.  Here, in the closet ... by ... the chimney....”

I could hardly distinguish the faint whispers.  I raised my hand impatiently, and the old man stopped moaning.  Mrs. Hikes and the doctor ceased speaking in low undertones.  Only a great moth, that had fluttered inside the lamp chimney thudded heavily from side to side.

“Yes, yes.  What shall I do with them?”

She did not speak, and seeing her agonized eyes trying to tell mine, I cried aloud, “Give her brandy—­something.  She wants to speak.  Oh, give her a chance to speak!”