Page:Steadfast Heart.djvu/330

 Angus, you must love me always, always. Every day and every hour you must love me—as you do to-night.”

He spoke in a hushed, detached voice. “I’ve heard people say the word happiness—but I never knew what they meant by it—not until this hour.”

Even as he spoke a wracking, wretching, horrible spasm of coughing interrupted and startled them. It was near them…. Someone was in the yard, almost beside them…. Angus stepped back from Lydia and faced the sound. The coughing ceased to be followed by an equally horrible struggle for breath—by rasping, spasmodic gasps. Then a man tottered out of the darkness and stood before them.

“I—follered you—all over town,” he said, grasping at a sapling for support and throwing back his head, as though to open to his lungs a freer passage for air—and Lydia saw his face…. It was a face she had not seen for more than half of her lifetime, and then but briefly, but it had seared itself upon her memory, photographed itself there in lines of horror…. Angus knew also. The sight of that face froze his heart, for it was the face of his father, of Titus Burke….

Angus dared not look at Lydia, nor could he force himself to move or to speak. He stood