So at last, as though by sheer will he had held on to this time, he turned his gray face toward me, and as a dead man, spoke.
"Tell your mother," he said; "Tell Meriwether--must protect--good-by." Then he said "Lizzie!" and opened wide his arms.
Presently he said, "Jack, lay my head down, please." I did so.

He was dead, there in the moon.
I straightened him, and put my coat across his face, and spurred back down the road again and over the gate.

But my mother already knew.

She met me at the hall, and her face was white.
"Jack," she said, "I know!" Then the servants came, and we brought him home, and laid him in his own great room, as the master of the house should lie when the end comes, and arrayed him like the gentleman he was.
Now came that old wire-hair, Doctor Bond, his mane standing stiff and gray over a gray face, down which tears rolled the first time known of any man.

He sent my mother away and called me to him.