The next moment the sheriff was turning back the flannel collar which covered the strong, pillar-like throat. In that moment David sought his father's eyes once more, smiled faintly, and called "Father! _Now_!" As the words reached the father's ears, the bullet reached the son's heart. He fell without a moan ere the rope had touched him. It was the father's groan which struck every heart like a blow; and there was a grandeur of suffering about him which no one thought of resisting.
He walked to his child's side, and kneeling down closed the eyes, and wept and prayed over him as a mother over her first-born. They were all fathers around him; not one of them but suffered with him. Silently they untied their horses and rode away; no one had the heart to say a word of dissent. If they had, Lorimer had reached a point far beyond care of man's approval or disapproval in the matter; for a great sorrow is indifferent to all outside itself.
When he lifted his head he was alone. The sheriff was waiting at the house door, Plato stood at a little distance, weeping. He motioned to him to approach, and in a few words understood that he had with him a companion and a rude bier. They laid the body upon it, and the sheriff having satisfied himself that the last penalty had been fully paid, Lorimer was permitted to claim his dead. He took him up to his own room and laid him on his own bed, and passed the night by his side. The dead opened the eyes of the living, and in that solemn companionship he saw all that he had been blind to for so many years. Then he understood what it must be to sit in the silent halls of eternal despair, and count over and over the wasted blessings of love and endure the agony of unavailing repentance.
In the morning he knew he must tell Lulu all; and this duty he dreaded. But in some way the girl already knew the full misery of the tragedy. Part she had divined, and part she had gathered from the servants' faces and words. She was quite aware _what_ was in her uncle's lonely room. Just as he was thinking of the hard necessity of going to her, she came to the door. For the first time in his life he called her "My daughter," and stooped and kissed her. He had a letter for her--David's dying message of love. He put it in her hand, and left her alone with the dead.