Peter, almost staggering forward, fell at the foot of the bed, and,
clasping the colonel's feet with one arm, pressed his cheek against
them.
"Come closer!"
Peter crept on his knees and buried his head on the colonel's thigh.
"Come up here--_closer_;" and putting one arm around Peter's neck he
laid the other hand softly on his head, and looked long and tenderly
into his eyes. "I've got to leave you, Peter. Don't you feel sorry for
me?"
"Oh, Marse Rom!" cried Peter, hiding his face, his whole form shaken by
sobs.
"Peter," added, the colonel with ineffable gentleness, "if I had served
my Master as faithfully as you have served yours, I should not feel
ashamed to stand in his presence."
"If my Marseter is ez mussiful to me ez you have been--"
"I have fixed things so that you will be comfortable after I am gone.
When your time comes, I should like you to be laid close to me. We can
take the long sleep together. Are you willing?"
"That's whar I want to be laid."
The colonel stretched out his hand to the vase, and taking the bunch of
pinks, said very calmly:
"Leave these in my hand; I'll carry them with me." A moment more, and
he added:
"If I shouldn't wake up any more, good-bye, Peter!"
"Good-bye, Marse Rom!"
And they shook hands a long time. After this the colonel lay back
on the pillows. His soft, silvery hair contrasted strongly with his
child-like, unspoiled, open face. To the day of his death, as is apt to
be true of those who have lived pure lives but never married, he had a
boyish strain in him--a softness of nature, showing itself even now in
the gentle expression of his mouth. His brown eyes had in them the same
boyish look when, just as he was falling asleep, he scarcely opened
them to say:
"Pray, Peter."
Peter, on his knees, and looking across the colonel's face towards the
open door, through which the rays of the rising sun streamed in upon
his hoary head, prayed, while the colonel fell asleep, adding a few
words for himself now left alone.
Several hours later, memory led the colonel back again through the dim
gate-way of the past, and out of that gate-way his spirit finally took
flight into the future.
Peter lingered a year. The place went to the colonel's sister, but he
was allowed to remain in his quarters. With much thinking of the past,
his mind fell into a lightness and a weakness. Sometimes he would be
heard crooning the burden of old hymns, or sometimes seen sitting
beside the old brass-nailed trunk, fumbling with the spelling-book and
_The Pilgrim's Progress_. Often, too, he walked out to the cemetery on
the edge of the town, and each time could hardly find the colonel's
grave amid the multitude of the dead.
One gusty day in spring, the Scotch sexton, busy with the blades of
blue-grass springing from the animated mould, saw his familiar figure
standing motionless beside the colonel's resting-place. He had taken
off his hat --one of the colonel's last bequests--and laid it on the
colonel's head-stone. On his body he wore a strange coat of faded
blue, patched and weather-stained, and so moth-eaten that parts of the
curious tails had dropped entirely away. In one hand he held an open
Bible, and on a much-soiled page he was pointing with his finger to the
following words:
"I would not have you ignorant, brethren, concerning them which are
asleep."
It would seem that, impelled by love and faith, and guided by his
wandering reason, he had come forth to preach his last sermon on the
immortality of the soul over the dust of his dead master.
The sexton led him home, and soon afterwards a friend, who had loved
them both, laid him beside the colonel.
It was perhaps fitting that his winding-sheet should be the vestment in
which, years agone, he had preached to his fellow-slaves in bondage;
for if it so be that the dead of this planet shall come forth from
their graves clad in the trappings of mortality, then Peter should
arise on the Resurrection Day wearing his old jeans coat.