After two or three days, George Yolland came up to see me.  He had been to see Dermot, and gave me comfort as to his condition and the care taken of him; but the chief cause of the visit was that they wanted my authority for the needful destruction of whatever had been in that room, and could not be passed through fire.  Mr. Yolland had brought me my Harold’s big, well-worn pocket-book, which he said must undergo the same doom, for though I was contagion proof, yet harm might be laid up for others, and only what was absolutely necessary must be saved.

First of all, indeed, lay in their crumpled paper poor Dora’s fatal gifts, treasured, no doubt, as probably her last; and there, in a deep leathern pocket, was another little parcel with Viola’s crystal cross, which her mother had made her return.  She might have that now, it would bear disinfecting; but the Irish heath-bells that told of autumn days at Killey Marey must go, and that brief note to me that had been treasured up—­yes, and the quaint old housewife, with D. L. (his aunt’s maiden initials), whence his needles and thread used to come for his mending work.  An old, worn pencil-case kept for his mother’s sake—­for Alice was on the seal—­was the only thing I could rescue; but next there came an envelope with “My will” scrawled on it.  Mr. Yolland thought I ought to open it, to see who had authority to act, and it proved that we alone had, for he was made executor, with L1,000.  A favourite rifle was bequeathed to Eustace, an annuity of L50 to Smith, and all the rest of the property was to be shared between Dora and me.  It was in the fewest words, not at all in form, but all right, and fully witnessed.  It was in the dear handwriting, and was dated on the sad lonely Saturday when he felt himself sickening.  The other things were accounts and all my letters, most of which could follow the fate of all that he had touched in those last days.  However, the visit was a comfort to me.  George Yolland answered my questions, and told me much more than poor Dermot could do in his stupefaction from grief, fatigue, and illness, even if I then could have understood.

He told me of the grief shown by all Mycening and Arghouse, and of the sobbing and weeping of mothers and children, who went in a broken pilgrimage on Sunday afternoon to the grave at Arghouse, of the throngs at the church and the hush, like a sob held back, when the text was given out:  “Thanks be to Him who giveth us the victory through Jesus Christ our Lord.”

Yet on the Saturday evening there was something more noted still.  The men stood about when they had come up for their wages to the office, where, but a week before, Harold had paid them, with a sore struggle to see and to count aright, as some even then had observed; and at last their spokesman had explained their great desire to do something themselves in memory of “the best friend they ever had,” as they truly called him.  Some of them had seen memorial-windows, and they wanted Mr. Yolland to take from each a small weekly subscription throughout the winter, to adorn the new chapel with windows.  “With the history of Samson a killin’ of the lion,” called out a gruff voice.  It was the voice of the father of the boy whom Harold had rescued on Neme Heath.