Joe and the doctor had undressed the old man,
and had put him into night-gear of Roger Tabor's,
taken from an antique chest; it was soft and yellow
and much more like color than the face above it,
for the white hair on the pillow was not whiter
than that. Yet there was a strange youthfulness
in the eyes of Eskew; an eerie, inexplicable,
luminous, LIVE look; the thin cheeks seemed fuller than
they had been for years; and though the heavier
lines of age and sorrow could be seen, they appeared
to have been half erased. He lay not in sunshine,
but in clear light; the windows were open, the
curtains restrained, for he had asked them not to
darken the room.

The doctor was whispering in a doctor's way to
Ariel at the end of the room opposite the bed, when
the three old fellows came in. None of them spoke
immediately, and though all three cleared their
throats with what they meant for casual cheerfulness,
to indicate that the situation was not at all
extraordinary or depressing, it was to be seen that
the Colonel's chin trembled under his mustache,
and his comrades showed similar small and unwilling
signs of emotion.

Eskew spoke first. "Well, boys?" he said, and
smiled.

That seemed to make it more difficult for the