"Jerrie, I have no money to leave you, it will all be gone by the time you and Nurse are safe at Aunt Prue's. Everything you have will come from her; you must always thank her very much for doing so much for you, and thank Uncle John and be very obedient to him."
"Will he make me do what I don't want to?" she asked, her lips pouting and her eyes moistening.
"Not unless it is best, and now you must promise me never to disobey him or Aunt Prue. Promise, Jerrie."
But Jerrie did not like to promise. She moved her feet uneasily, she scratched on the arm of his chair with a pin that she had picked up on the floor of the veranda; she would not lift her eyes nor speak. She did not love to be obedient; she loved to be queen in her own little realm of Self.
"Papa is dying--he will soon go away, and his little daughter will not promise the last thing he asks of her?"
Instantly, in a flood of penitent tears, her arms were flung about his neck and she was promising over and over, "I will, I will," and sobbing on his shoulder.
He suffered the embrace for a few moments and then pushed her gently aside.
"Papa is tired now, dear. I want to teach you a Bible verse, that you must never, never forget: 'The way of the transgressor is hard.' Say it after me."
The child brushed her tears away and stood upright.
"The way of the transgressor is hard," she repeated in a sobbing voice.
"Tell Uncle John and Aunt Prue that that was the last thing I taught you, will you?"
"Yes, papa," catching her breath with a little sob.
"And now run away and come back in a hour and I will read the letters to you. Ask Nurse to tell you when it is an hour."
The child skipped away, and before many minutes he heard her laughing with the children on the beach. With the letters in his hand, and the crumpled handkerchief with the moist red spots tucked away behind him in the chair, he leaned back and closed his eyes. His breath came easily after a little time and he dozed and dreamed. He was a boy again and it was a moonlight night, snow was on the ground, and he was walking home from town besides his oxen; he had sold the load of wood that he had started with before daylight; he had eaten his two lunches of bread and salt beef and doughnuts, and now, cold and tired and sleepy, he was walking back home at the side of his oxen. The stars were shining, the ground was as hard as stone beneath his tread, the oxen labored on slowly, it seemed as if he would never get home. His mother would have a hot supper for him, and the boys would ask what the news was, and what he had seen, and his little sister would ask if he had bought that piece of ginger bread for her. He stirred and the papers rustled in his fingers and there was a harsh sound somewhere as of a bolt grating, and his cell was small and the bed so narrow, so narrow and so hard, and he was suffocating and could not get out.