"One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten;" Jessie
counted it aloud, while every stroke fell like a heavy blow upon the
hearts of the young men, who a few weeks ago, knew not that such as
Maddy Clyde had ever had existence.
How long it seemed before another stroke, and Guy was beginning to
hope they'd heard the last, when again the dull, muffled sound came
floating on the air, and Dr. Holbrook's black, bearded lip half
quivered as he now counted aloud, "one, two, three, four, five."
That was all; there it stopped; and vain were all their listenings to
catch another note. Fifteen years, and only fifteen had passed over
the form now forever still.
"She was fifteen," Guy whispered, remembering distinctly to have heard
that number from Maddy herself.
"I thought they told me fourteen, but of course it's she," the doctor
rejoined. "Poor child, I would have given much to have saved her."
Jessie did not talk; only once, when she asked Guy, if it was very far
to heaven, and if he supposed Maddy had got there by this time.
"We'll go just the same," said Guy. "I will do what I can for the old
man;" and so the carriage drove on, down the hill, across the
meadow-land, and past a low-roofed house whose walls inclosed the
stiffened form of him for whom the bell had tolled, the boy, fifteen
years of age, who had been the patient of another than Dr. Holbrook.
Maddy was not dead, but the paroxysm of restlessness had passed, and
she lay now in a heavy sleep so nearly resembling death that they who
watched, waited expectantly to see the going out of her last breath.
Never before had a carriage like that from Aikenside stopped at that
humble cottage, but the neighbors thought it came merely to bring the
doctor, whom they welcomed with a glad smile, making a way for him to
pass to Maddy's bedside. Guy preferred waiting in the carriage until
such time as Grandpa Markham could speak with him, but Jessie went
with the doctor into the sick room, startling even the grandmother,
and causing her to wonder who the richly-dressed child could be.
"Dying, doctor," said one of the women, affirmatively, not
interrogatively; but the doctor shook his head, and holding in one
hand his watch he counted the faint pulse beats as with his eye he
measured off the minute.
"There are too many here," he said. "She needs the air you are
breathing," and in his singular, authoritative way, he cleared the
crowded room of the mistaken friends who were unwittingly breathing up
Maddy's very life.