"I'm going to tell the others. I'm going to testify to the power of His might," he said just as grimly, gripping his stiff, cold hands together.
"Yell be getting upset, Andrew, an' then we'll be having a time with ye," said Aunt Janet.
"I'll not be getting upset. I'll just be dying," he said gravely, and, calling Marcella, sent her to the village, summoning all the people to come up to the farm on All Souls' Night at seven o'clock.
"I must tell them, Marcella," he said passionately, pleading for her understanding which she could not give, for she could not understand in the least. "I have never done anything for anyone. I must do something."
"I'm afraid you'll be worse for it, father," she said, hesitant. "And so is Aunt Janet--poor Aunt Janet. She's so anxious about you, and she's so tired, you know."
"I'll be master in my own house," he cried, with some little return to the old Andrew. "I know it will make me worse! I know I'm dying! There, I ought not to frighten you, Marcella! I've frightened you enough in my life. But surely when I've lived for myself I can die for others."
And she knew that it was no use talking to him. Indeed, she would not have dared to cross his will. In the night he prayed about it.
"Lord, I must tell these others how I set beasts in Thy way when Thou wouldn't have made my life Thy path. I must tell them how I never knew liberty till Thou hadst made me Thy slave, how I never knew lightness till I carried Thy cross, how I was hungering and thirsting until I was fed with Thy Body and Blood--"
He broke off and talked to Marcella, words that seemed eerie and terrible to her.
"To-morrow, Marcella, is the day when the ruin came on Lashnagar. To-morrow I shall die--"
"I was once His enemy, Marcella. I must let them see me at His feet now, kissing His hand--His man--the King's man--"
He brooded for an hour, gasping for breath. Marcella felt worn out mentally and physically. Her eyes ached for want of sleep, she felt the oppression and burden of the atmosphere that seemed full of ghosts and fears, and to add to her misery she was having her first taste of pain in a crazing attack of neuralgia. Anniversaries, to a mind stored with legend and superstition, have immense signification. She felt that her father's prediction of his death on All Souls' Day was quite reasonable. But none the less fear was penetrating through her mists of weariness and fatalism, hand in hand with overwhelming pity.