As Ishmael slowly and with meticulous care put the letters safely on to the bed a step was heard coming along the passage, the step of Nicky, the only step in that house which was both that of a man and vigorous.  Archelaus turned his head a little on the pillow, and Ishmael, for the first time showing any emotion, leant towards him.  “If you say a word to him—­” he began.  The steps paused at the door and then went on again.  Ishmael stayed bent forward, eyes sidelong.  Archelaus began to speak, as though his mind had drifted backwards from the acuteness of the present.

“All these years ...” he muttered, “all these years ... wandering auver the earth, I’ve thought on it....  Phoebe, she was a light woman and many was the time I’d held her lil’ body to mine, but she was soft as a lil’ lamb fresh from its mother, so she was....  The likes of you wants too much from a woman; I was never one of they chaps.  If a woman was lil’ and soft, said I—­”

“Archelaus,” said Ishmael, speaking very distinctly and bending over the old man to try and attract his wandering attention, “when you came back from California, had you it in your mind to do this thing?”

He had to repeat the question, and at last Archelaus showed a gleam of knowledge.  “When I came back from Californy ...” he murmured, “I came back, so I ded....  No, I’d forgot all about her then, sure enough; she was but a soft lil’ thing.  But he’d got her, him as had taken all of mine, got the wench as had been mine, that I might ha’ wanted again, and I was mad as fire.  And then I was glad of it, for I saw my way, if so be as I could only get a cheild by her....”  He turned a little on his pillows towards Ishmael and became confidential.  “That was my fear,” he went on, “that I’d go wi’ her again and no cheild ’ud come any more than it had afore.  But there’s often a change in women after a few years, and besides ...  I’d not wanted to get ’en afore.  I knew I’d get ’en that time, and I ded.  She was some whisht, she was, weth you and your fine gentleman ways of not sleeping along o’ she, when she found the way she was in....”  He laughed, a tiny, little old thread-like laugh, as out of the trough of the years there floated up to him Phoebe’s predicament and his advice as to how to meet it—­a thin little thread of laughter that spanned the years and connected that time of which he spoke with this present moment by the bed of death.  The laugh died away and fell again into the abysses from which it had been evoked, and there only hung a silence in the room, but it was a silence thin, brittle as glass.

His lids drooped.  Over his fast dimming brain the films of approaching dissolution began to swirl, now thick and fast, now tenuous again, so that he recognised Ishmael and what had happened for a fleeting moment during which the old glee peeped out of his blurred eyes.  Then he drifted into sleep with the suddenness of an infant, a sleep quite peaceful, as of one who has accomplished well his task and now