"I love old Jim, Miss Redmond. We've been boys and men together, and good fellows always. But don't think that I'd regret his struggle for you, as you call it, even if it should mean the worst. He couldn't have done otherwise, and I wouldn't have had him. And if it's to be a--a home run--why, then, Jim would like that far better than to die of old age or liver complaint. It's all right, Miss Redmond."
Aleck's slow words came with a double meaning to Agatha. She heard, through them, echoes of James Hambleton's boyhood; she saw a picture of his straight and dauntless youth. She held out to Aleck a hand that trembled, but her face shone with gratitude.
Aleck took her hand respectfully, kindly, in his warm grasp. "Besides," he said simply, "we won't give up. He's got a fighting chance yet."
Lights in a country house at night are often the signal of birth or death, sometimes of both. The old red house threw its beacon from almost every window that night, and seemed mutely to defy the onslaught of enveloping darkness, whether Plutonic or Stygian. Time was when Parson Thayer's library lamp burned nightly into the little hours, and through the uncurtained windows the churchyard ghosts, had they wandered that way, could have seen his long thin form, wrapped in a paisley cloth dressing-gown, sitting in the glow. He would have been reading some old leather-bound volume, and would have remained for hours almost as quiet and noiseless as the ghosts themselves. Now he had stepped across his threshold and joined them, and new spirits had come to burn the light in the old red house.
Agatha, half-dressed, had slept, and woke feeling that the night must be far advanced. The house was very still, with no sound or echo of the incoherent tones which, for now many days, had come from the room down the hall. She lit a candle, and the sputtering match seemed to fill the house with noise. Her clock indicated a little past midnight. It was only twenty minutes since she had lain down, but she was wide awake and refreshed. While she was pinning up her hair in a big mass on the top of her head, she heard in the hall slow, steady steps, firm but not heavy, even as in daytime. Susan Stoddard did not tiptoe.