“I have been near you all the while you have been here; I shall not leave you again.”

“No, not again—­it will be such a little while, and I cannot hurt you now.  Have you been happy?”

“Sometimes.  I had our child.”

“Where is she?”

“Here.  She was tired and has fallen asleep.”

“Don’t wake her yet.  I know I forget a great deal—­everything seems far off—­but just at last I wanted you, and you are here.”

Both were silent for a minute.  Then he spoke again—­

“Mary, why did you marry an Indian?”

“Because I loved him,” she said, her voice half choked by sobs.

“It was a pity.  You knew nothing.  They cheated you into it; but I think, though he was a brute, he loved you always.  In his way, you know, as much as he could.”

His mind seemed to be beginning to wander again, and his voice grew weaker.  She rose, crying quietly, and gave him a little more wine.  Then she touched Lucia and said, “Come, my child.”

Lucia was instantly awake.  She followed her mother to the bedside.

“Here is our daughter.  Can you see her?”

“Not very well.  Is she like you?”

“No.  She is an Indian girl—­strangers say she is beautiful, but to me she is only my brave, good child.”

“I am glad.  She will make amends.  It is all right now; you will be free and safe.  Good-bye.”

He was silent for awhile, lying with closed eyes; and when he spoke again it was in Ojibway.  He seemed to be talking to his own people, and to fancy himself out in the woods with a hunting party.  After a time this ceased also, and then he began to talk confusedly in the three languages which were familiar to him, and in broken, incoherent sentences.  His voice, however, grew fainter and fainter.  The wine which they gave him at short intervals seemed to revive him each time for a moment; but neither of them could doubt that the end was very near.

But as it came nearer still, the delusion that had been strongest lately came back to the dying man.  He again fancied himself a child—­the favourite pupil of the Jesuit fathers.  He began to repeat softly, lessons they had taught him—­prayers and scraps of hymns, sometimes Latin, sometimes French.  Once, after a pause, he began to recite, quite clearly, a Latin Psalm—­

“O Domine, libera animam meam:  misericors Dominus et justus; et Deus miseretur....  Convertere, anima mea, in requiem tuam, quia Dominus benefecit tibi”—­

Again there was a silence, for he was deaf to all earthly voices, and the wife and daughter knelt side by side and listened to those strange broken sentences, which seemed to come from a mind dead to all outward influences, yet not wholly unconscious of its own state.

Once he said “Mary;” but though she held his hand still clasped in hers, his wife could not make her voice heard in answer.  Then he talked again murmuringly of old times; and last of all when the low musical tones had grown very feeble, but were musical still, Mary heard, “Mon Dieu, j’espere avec une ferme confiance”—­There the words seemed to fail, until they grew audible again for one last moment—­“la vie eternelle.”