But the cock crew.
The roof jarred.
"How is Mrs. Merrymusk?"
"Well."
"And the children?"
"Well. All well."
The last two words he shouted forth in a kind of wild ecstasy of
triumph over ill. It was too much. His head fell back. A white napkin
seemed dropped upon his face. Merrymusk was dead.
An awful fear seized me.
But the cock crew.
The cock shook his plumage as if each feather were a banner. The cock
hung from the shanty roof as erewhile the trophied flags from the dome
of St. Paul's. The cock terrified me with exceeding wonder.
I drew nigh the bedsides of the woman and children. They marked my look
of strange affright; they knew what had happened.
"My good man is just dead," breathed the woman lowly. "Tell me true?"
"Dead," said I.
The cock crew.
She fell back, without a sigh, and through long-loving sympathy was
dead.
The cock crew.
The cock shook sparkles from his golden plumage. The cock seemed in
a rapture of benevolent delight. Leaping from the hoop, he strode
up majestically to the pile of old clothes, where the wood-sawyer
lay, and planted himself, like an armorial supporter, at his side.
Then raised one long, musical, triumphant, and final sort of a crow,
with throat heaved far back, as if he meant the blast to waft the
wood-sawyer's soul sheer up to the seventh heavens. Then he strode,
king-like, to the woman's bed. Another upturned and exultant crow,
mated to the former.
The pallor of the children was changed to radiance. Their faces shone
celestially through grime and dirt. They seemed children of emperors
and kings, disguised. The cock sprang upon their bed, shook himself,
and crowed, and crowed again, and still and still again. He seemed bent
upon crowing the souls of the children out of their wasted bodies. He
seemed bent upon rejoining instanter this whole family in the upper
air. The children seemed to second his endeavors. Far, deep, intense
longings for release transfigured them into spirits before my eyes. I
saw angels where they lay.
They were dead.
The cock shook his plumage over them. The cock crew. It was now like a
Bravo! like a Hurrah! like a Three-times-three! hip! hip! He strode
out of the shanty. I followed. He flew upon the apex of the dwelling,
spread wide his wings, sounded one supernatural note, and dropped at my
feet.
The cock was dead.
If now you visit that hilly region, you will see, nigh the railroad
track, just beneath October Mountain, on the other side of the
swamp--there you will see a gravestone, not with skull and cross-bones,
but with a lusty cock in act of crowing, chiseled on it, with the words
beneath:
"_O death, where is thy sting?
O grave, where is thy victory?_"
The wood-sawyer and his family, with the Signor Beneventano, lie in
that spot; and I buried them, and planted the stone, which was a stone
made to order; and never since then have I felt the doleful dumps, but
under all circumstances crow late and early with a continual crow.
Cock-a-Doodle-Doo!--oo!--oo!--oo!--oo!