Dyke Emson sat in the darkness there along. He had seen no more of Jack
and Tanta Sal since the evening. The latter had looked in, stared
stupidly, said "Baas Joe go die," once more, and roused the boy into
such a pitch of fury that he came nigh to throwing something at her.
Then she left the room with her husband, and Dyke was alone.
He felt ready to give up, and throw himself upon his face in his great
despair, for hour by hour the feeling strengthened that his brother was
indeed dying fast; and as he sat there in the midst of that terrible
solitude, shut in, as it were, by the black darkness, his busy
imagination flooded his brain with thoughts of what he would have to do.
The fancy maddened him, for it seemed cruel and horrible to think of
such a thing when his brother lay there muttering in the delirium; but
the thought would come persistently, and there was the picture vividly
standing out before him. For his mind was in such an unnatural state of
exaltation that he could not keep it hidden from his mental gaze.
There it all was, over and over again: that place he had selected where
it was nearly always shaded--in that rift in the kopje where the soft
herbage grew, and climbed and laced overhead, while the low murmur of
the water gurgling from the rocks in the next rift fell gently upon his
ear. He had selected that spot because it was so calm and peaceful, and
drawn poor Joe there upon the little sled. He saw it all--the shallow,
dark bed he had dug in the soft earth, where his brother was to rest in
peace, with all the suffering at an end. There were big, mossy pieces
of granite there, which would cover and protect the poor fellow's
resting-place, and a smooth, perpendicular face of rock above, on which
he saw himself, chipping out with hammer and cold chisel the one word
"Joe."