Page:The leopard's spots - a romance of the white man's burden-1865-1900 (IA leopardsspotsrom00dixo).pdf/407

 The results did not seem to promise what they had hoped. Her fever rose steadily. She became conscious again and immediately went into the most fearful convulsions, breaking the torn artery a second time.

Just as the sun sank behind the blue mountains peaks in the west, her heart fluttered and she was dead.

Tom sat by the bed for two hours, looking, looking, looking with wide staring eyes at her white dead face. There was not the trace of a tear. His mouth was set in a hard cold way and he never moved or spoke.

The Preacher tried to comfort Tom, who stared at him as though he did not recognise him at first, and then slowly began,

"Go away, Preacher, I don't want to see or talk to you now. It's all a swindle and a lie. There is no God!"

"Tom, Tom!" groaned the Preacher.

"I tell you I mean it," he continued. "I don't want any more of God or His heaven. I don't want to see God. For if I should see Him, I'd shake my fist in His face and ask him where His almighty power was when my poor little baby was screamin' for help while that damned black beast was tearin' her to pieces! Many and many a time I've praised God when I read the Bible there where it said, not a sparrow falleth to the ground without His knowledge, and the very hairs of our head are numbered. Well, where was He when my little bird was flutterin' her broken bleedin' wings in the claws of that stinkin' baboon,—damn him to everlastin' hell!—It's all a swindle I tell you!"

The Preacher was watching him now with silent pity and tenderness.

"What a lie it all is!" Tom repeated. "Scratch my name off the church roll. I ain't got many more days here, but I won't lie. I'm not a hypocrite. I'm going to meet God cursin' Him to His face!"