Page:The Father Confessor, Stories of Danger and Death.djvu/162

152 the matter? I—I was walking past"—in truth he had been standing beneath her window for an hour—"and I heard a shot."

"I don't know; I was asleep," she said, as she crossed the hall to the door of her father's room. She opened it softly, and heard her father's voice, infinitely tender.

"Angela, Angela, come to me, Angela."

"I am here, father," she replied, as she sprang into the room.

The light was still burning. She could see her father in the arm-chair before the fire. His head hung upon his breast. There was a strange red upon his cheek. In the hand that lay upon his knees was a pistol, the grey smoke still hovering about it.

The women came clattering down the stairs, excited and afraid. "What was the shot?" "Where had it come from?" They stood at the open door, and saw the tragedy—the dying man, with his great selfish love at peace at last. And there was the little white daughter, standing in the middle of the room, afraid to go nearer. She was nothing to him—nothing at all! She cried in a terrified voice, "Father! father!" and at the sound he moved his arms