The old man did not reply--he only sang a low melody and smoothed her forehead.
It was ten o'clock, and now she lay on the old man's lap asleep from exhaustion. A cricket began chirping in the fireplace, under a hearth-brick.
"What's that, Pap?" asked Shiloh half asleep.
"That's a cricket, Pet," smiled the old man.
She listened a while with a half-amused smile on her lips:
"Well, don't you think his spindles need oilin', Pap?"
There was little but machinery in her life.
Another hour found the old man tired, but still holding the sleeping child in his arms:
"If I move her she'll wake," he said to himself. "Po' little Shiloh."
He was silent a while and thoughtful. Then he looked up at the shadow of Sand Mountain, falling half way down the valley in the moonlight.
"The shadow of that mountain across that valley," he said, "is like the shadow of the greed of gain across the world. An' why should it be? What is it worth? Who is happier for any money more than he needs in life?"
He bowed his head over the sleeping Shiloh.
"Oh, God," he prayed--"You, who made the world an' said it might have a childhood--remember what it means to have it filched away. It's like stealin' the bud from the rose-bush, the dew from the grass, hope from the heart of man. Take our manhood--O God--it is strong enough to stand it--an' it has been took from many a strong man who has died with a smile on his lips. Take our old age--O God--for it's jus' a memory of Has Beens. But let them not steal that from any life that makes all the res' of it beautiful with dreams of it. If, by some inscrutable law which we po' things can't see through, stealin' in traffic an' trade must go on in the world, O God, let them steal our purses, but not our childhood. Amen."
The whistle of the mill had scarcely awakened Cottontown the next morning before Archie B., hatless and full of excitement, came over to the Bishop with a message from his mother. No one was astir but Mrs. Watts, and she was sweeping vigorously.
"What's the matter, Archie B.?" asked the old man when he came out.
"Uncle Dave Dickey is dyin' an' maw told me to run over an' tell you to hurry quick if you wanted to see the old man die."
"Oh, Uncle Dave is dyin', is he? Well, we'll go, Archie B., just as soon as Ben Butler can be hooked up. I've got some more calls to make anyway."