They had been with him for hours, trying to understand him as he struggled to speak.

“There is something he wants to tell us,” Eloise said, and in his eyes there was a look of affirmation, while the lips tried in vain to frame the words, which were only gurgling sounds.

What did the dying man want to say?  Was he trying to reveal a secret kept so many years, and which was planting his pillow with thorns?  Was he back in the palmetto clearing, standing in the moonlight with Dora, and exacting a promise from her which broke her heart?  No one could guess, and least of all the two women ministering to him so tenderly,—­Amy, because she loved him, and Eloise, because she felt that he was more to her than a mere stranger.  She was very quiet and self-contained.  The events of the last two days had transformed her from a timid girl into a fearless woman, ready to fight for her own rights and those of her mother.  Once when Amy was from the room a moment she bent close to the Colonel and said, “You are my mother’s father?”

There was a choking sound and an attempt to move the head which Eloise took for assent.

“Then you are my grandfather?” she added.

This time she was sure he nodded, and she said, “It will all be right.  You can rest now,” but he didn’t rest.

There was more on his mind which he could not tell.

“I believe it is Mr. Howard,” Eloise thought, and said to him, “He is coming on the next train.  I hear it now.  He will soon be here.  Is that what you want?”

The dying man turned his head wearily.  There was more besides Howard he wanted, but when at last the young man came into the room, his eyes shone with a look of pleased recognition, and he tried to speak a welcome.  In the hall outside Jack was waiting, and as Eloise passed out he gave her his hand, and leading her to a settee, sat down beside her, and told her how glad he was for the news he had heard of her, but feeling the while that he did not know whether he were glad or not.  She had never looked fairer or sweeter to him than she did now, and yet there was a difference which he detected, and which troubled him.  It would have been easy to say “I love you,” to the helpless little school-teacher at Mrs. Biggs’s, and he wished now he had done so, and not waited till she became a daughter of the Crompton House, as he believed she was.  Now he could only look his love into the eyes which fell beneath his gaze, as he held her hand and questioned her of the Colonel’s sudden attack, and the means by which she had discovered her relationship to Amy.

Again he repeated, “I am so glad for you,” and might have said more if Howard had not stepped into the hall, his face clouded and anxious.

“He wants you, I think,” he said to Eloise.  “At least he wants something,—­I don’t know what.”

Eloise went to him at once, and again there was a painful effort to speak.  But whatever he would say was never said, and after a little the palsied tongue ceased trying to articulate, and only his eyes showed how clear his reason was to the last.  If there was sorrow for the past, he could not express it.  If thoughts of the palmetto clearing were in his mind, no one knew it.  All that could be guessed at was that he wanted Amy and Eloise with him.