Mr. Carr, who had been slowly succumbing to his great grief, was ill the closing day of the trial. Dragging heavily through an existence that was not life, he was but a wraith of his former self. Waiting patiently, submitting with lifted head to the law’s justice. When he was told of the doom of Cooley, he seemed hardly to hear it, and he made no comment. It seemed now as if little else of life remained and yet occasional incoherent phrases showed the signs of some duty neglected and weighing heavily on the wandering mind.
One morning, Elliott, seeing the longing visibly reflected on the old man’s countenance, asked:
“What is it, father? Is there anything I can do?” And he laid his face to the withered palm of the outstretched hand. The sick man suddenly seemed to realize that his reason was abandoning him, and he made a supreme effort to collect his ideas and frame them into coherent speech.
“Help me!” he said piteously. Then turning his head toward the window where he could see the grave so lately made for Dorothy, his worn face quivered and the big, slow tears ran down his furrowed cheeks.
“Is it something of her you would say?” Elliott inquired.
But the aged lips made no answer. For a time Elliott sat beside him, silent. Suddenly the old face lighted. Lifting up his sorrowful eyes, he said:
“It has come, Elliott—my will! I have left everything to you, and, don’t forget Chloe.”
Then once again, the look of blank abstraction spread over his features and he sank into a state of collapse as if the effort to think had exhausted his share of vitality.
Elliott and his neighbors stood by and saw him grow feebler, his breath fainter. The old and eternal Mother Nature was silently slipping her pitying arms around her tired child. Presently the uncomplaining eyes were to be dimmed and the lips silenced forever. And as the end came, peacefully and quietly, Elliott forgot all—himself, his heartbreak, his wrath, forgot everything in the realization of the peace, the rest now possessing this long tired soul.
The memory of the past swept over him. He recalled all that Dorothy had been to her father from the time when she had first stretched out her baby arms to him, all the little ways by which she had brought back his youth and made his house home, and his heart soft again.
Two days later, all that was mortal of Napoleon Carr lay prone and cold in a new grave. He himself had chosen the spot between the two mounds, over which the grass lay in long windrows above his wife and child.
Chloe was faithful to the end and was there when death darkened the eyes of her master.
She was given the home she then lived in and ample provision for its maintenance.
The Carr homestead was closed and Elliott went again to live with his uncle, Mr. Field.