fingers, covering his great hands. He was bleeding to death through the genital organs.
Eliza rushed toward him at a strong clumsy gait; she tried to lift him; he was too big for her to handle, and she screamed to Luke for help. He came at once, running at top speed across the yard and, scarcely pausing in his stride, he picked up Gant’s great figure in his arms—it felt as light and fleshless as a bundle of dry sticks—and turning to his mother, said curtly:
“Call Helen! Quick! I’ll take him to his room and get his clothes off.”
And holding the old man as if he were a child, he fairly raced up the steps and down the hall, leaving a trail of blood behind him as he went.
Eliza, scarcely conscious of what she did, paused just long enough to pick up Gant’s black felt hat and walking-stick which had fallen to the walk. Then, her face white and set as a block of marble, she rushed up the steps and down the hall toward the telephone. Now that the end had come, after all the years of agony and waiting, the knowledge filled her with an unbelievable, an incredulous horror. In another moment she was talking to her daughter.
“Oh, child, child,” she said in a low tone of utter terror, “come quick!… You father’s bleeding to death!”
There was a gasp, a sob of anguish and surprise, half broken in the throat, the receiver was banged on the hook without an answer: within four minutes Helen had arrived, Barton, usually a deliberate and cautious driver, having taken the dangerous hills and curves between at murderous speed.
As she entered the hall, her mother had just finished phoning to McGuire. Without a word of greeting the two women rushed back through the rear hall towards Gant’s room; when they got there Luke had already finished undressing him. Gant lay half propped on pillows, still holding his great hands clutched around his genitals, the sheet beneath him was already soaked with blood, a red wet blot that spread horribly, sickeningly even as they looked. Gant’s cold-grey eyes were bright with terror. As his daughter entered the room, he looked at her with the pitiable entreaty of a child, a look that tore at her heart, that begged her—the only one on earth who could, the only one who through black years of horror actually had—by some miracle of strength and grace to save him. And even as he looked at her with pitiable entreaty, she saw that he was gone, that he was dying, and that he knew it. Cold terror drank her
