When the Major explained our words to the military character, that
gentleman shrugged his shoulders and showed the Major the card on which
it was written about the Legacy for me. It had been written with a weak
and trembling hand in bed, and I knew no more of the writing than of the
face. Neither did the Major.

Though lying there alone, the poor creetur was as well taken care of as
could be hoped, and would have been quite unconscious of any one's
sitting by him then. I got the Major to say that we were not going away
at present and that I would come back to-morrow and watch a bit by the
bedside. But I got him to add--and I shook my head hard to make it
stronger--"We agree that we never saw this face before."

Our boy was greatly surprised when we told him sitting out in the balcony
in the starlight, and he ran over some of those stories of former
Lodgers, of the Major's putting down, and asked wasn't it possible that
it might be this lodger or that lodger. It was not possible, and we went
to bed.

In the morning just at breakfast-time the military character came
jingling round, and said that the doctor thought from the signs he saw
there might be some rally before the end. So I says to the Major and
Jemmy, "You two boys go and enjoy yourselves, and I'll take my Prayer
Book and go sit by the bed." So I went, and I sat there some hours,
reading a prayer for him poor soul now and then, and it was quite on in
the day when he moved his hand.

He had been so still, that the moment he moved I knew of it, and I pulled
off my spectacles and laid down my book and rose and looked at him. From
moving one hand he began to move both, and then his action was the action