The girls looked at each other dubiously.

"We all read that together," Alix encouraged him.

"No--" he said, musingly. They thought he slept again, but he
presently added, "Somewhere in Matthew--no, in Mark--Mark is the
human one--Mark was as human as his Master--"

"Shall I read you from Mark?" Alix asked, as his voice sank again.
A shabby old Bible always stood at her father's bedside; she
reached for it, and making a desperate effort to steady her voice,
began to read. The place was marked by an old letter, and opened
at the chapter he seemed to desire, for as she read he seemed to
be drinking in the words. Once they heard him whisper "Wonderful!"
Cherry got up on the bed, and took the splendid dying head in her
arms, the murky winter dawn crept in, and the lamp burned sickly
in the daylight. Hong could be heard stirring. Alix closed the
book and extinguished the lamp. Cherry did not move.

"Charity!" the old man said, presently, in a simple, childish
tone. Later, with bursts of tears, in all the utter desolation of
the days that followed, Cherry loved to remember that his last
utterance was her name. But Alix knew, though she never said it,
that it was to another Charity he spoke.

Subdued, looking younger and thinner in their new black, the
sisters came downstairs, ten days later, for a business talk.
Peter had been named as one executor, but Peter was far away, and
it was a pleasant family friend, a kindly old surgeon of Doctor
Strickland's own age, or near it, and the lawyer, George Sewall,