“No—­no!” Ishmael put out his hand to take the letters which Archelaus had gathered into his grasp again.  With surprising strength Archelaus rolled his body over on to them, and his voice was raised in a cry before Ishmael could stop him.  At the same moment a step sounded in the corridor.  It was Nicky, doubtless anxious, coming along for a third time to listen if all were well.  At the cry he hurried and opened the door and came quickly in.

Hester the dog was with him and, bounding forward in the boisterous manner of the well-meaning foolish creatures of her type, she sprang upon the bed.  Nicky ran forward as Archelaus uttered another cry, but unlike the first.  This was of pure high terror.  Nicky seized the dog by the scruff of the neck, so that she hung suspended for a moment in his grasp above the bed, before he bore her to the door.  Archelaus stared as though he saw a ghost; his old mouth fell open, showing slack and curved inwards like the mouth of a very young baby.  His eyes glazed with his terror; his cheeks had in that one minute assumed a pale, purplish hue, on which the deep lines and darker veins stood out like a network laid over his shrunken skin.  He sat up in bed—­he who had not lifted his head for a week—­and stayed rigid so for a few beating moments.  Then he fell back, crumpled up amid the pillows.  Nicky had flung the dog outside, and came to bend over him, casting a watchful eye towards Ishmael to see how he was standing it.  Ishmael’s hand was slipped into the bed under his brother’s body; his eyes were fixed on his face.

“Go for the doctor, quickly, Nicky!” he said.  “Go yourself.”

The dying man opened his eyes and fixed them on Ishmael.

“No,” he said, so faintly that Nicky had to bend low to hear; “no.  You don’t need to send him away....  I’ve had a sign, Ishmael; I’ve had a sign....  Oh, my soul, I’ve had a sign!...”

Ishmael bent over to him, trembling, waiting, wondering.

“All these years I’ve tried to forget ...” said Archelaus, “and the Lard hasn’t forgotten.... Phoebe, Phoebe, keep the dog from off me!...” His voice cracked on arising scream.  Then he fell into an exhausted silence, but his eyes still sought Ishmael’s.  Profoundly stirred, knowing that, at what was literally for him the last hour, Archelaus was agreeing to forego the full cup of his revenge, wondering why and yet too shaken to wonder intelligently, Ishmael called to him in sudden passion: 

“Archelaus ... brother!  Try and think one thought of love, only one, don’t think of your fear.  There’s nothing there to hurt you.  There’s only me and Nicky....”  But Archelaus never spoke again.  He lay and gazed as though he were struggling for speech; in his eyes struggled the tortured questioning of the inarticulate.

What it was that had struck home to his brother at the last Ishmael was never to know, but he recognised that in that minute’s space was all of remorse and understanding and forbearance, of a blind effort towards something not wholly self, that Archelaus had ever known.  The dying man flung a failing hand out to Nicky, and his eyes were on him when what light still lingered in them faded and went out.