“And then after a while,” the boy resumed, “I seemed to see a black speck somewhere. And I could not understand it. I did not like it, and it made me miserable. But, I said to myself, whatever the black speck may be, God will rub it white when he is ready! For you know, he couldn’t go on forever with a black speck going about in his heart. And when I said this, all at once I knew the black speck was Corney, and I started to cry. But then the black speck began to grow dim, and it grew dimmer and dimmer till all at once I could see it no more. The same instant Corney stood beside me with a smile on his face, and the tears running down his cheeks. I stretched out my arms to him, and he caught me up in his, and then it was all right. And then I woke, majie.”

The days went on. Every day Mark said, “Now, majie, I do think today I shall tell Corney my dream and the message I have for him.” But each day passed and the dream was not told. The next and the next and the next passed and he seemed to the major not likely ever to have the strength to tell Corney. Still, even his mother, who was almost constantly in the room during the day, did not perceive that his time was drawing nigh. Hester also was much with him now, and sometimes his father, occasionally Corney and Mrs. Corney, as Mark called her with a merry look—very pale on his almost transparent face. But none of them seemed to think his end quite near. When several were in the room, he would lie looking from one to another like a miser contemplating his riches—and well he might! For such riches neither moth nor rust corrupt, and they are the treasures of heaven also. He took everything that came to him as in itself right. He seemed in his illness to love everybody more than even while he was well.

One evening most of the family were in the room. A vague sense had diffused itself that the end was not far off, and an unspoken instinct had gathered them.

A lamp was burning low, but the firelight was stronger.

Mark spoke. In a moment the major was bending over him.

“Majie,” he whispered, “I want Corney. I want to tell him.”

The major went to find the brother, and on his way met the father and told him that the end was near. With a sorely self-accusing heart, for the vision of the boy seated in the middle of the cold moor the day of their walk haunted him, he went quickly to the boy’s room, the anteroom of heaven.