absent. It sustained him when he was discouraged, gave him strength when he was weary, kept his drooping eyes open when they were heavy with sleep. Dollar was added to dollar, and slowly the little hoard grew, until, by the end of a year, it counted fifty-six. But that was forty-four less than was required. And, in the mean while, the second winter would be coming on, which the doctor had said Paul could not survive. For the first time, he gained no strength during the summer; and with the first cold days in September he failed so rapidly that it seemed sometimes a question of hours, when he would breathe his last.
Narve, to whom his task had become dearer, the nearer it seemed to success, was in despair. He tried to borrow the sum he needed from his employer, but met with a gruff refusal. He invented a dozen ingenious plans, but they all required time, and had therefore to be abandoned. Every time he could find a pretext for leaving the store, he rushed over to his brother's room, and stood wringing his hands in helpless grief, while gazing at the sallow and withered features, in which a spark of life seemed scarcely to be lingering. He walked about as in a trance, attending mechanically to his duties, but hardly knowing what he did, always pursued by the dread that, when he returned, he might find his brother dead.
It so happened that, after a day spent in a torture of apprehension, Narve was sent by his employer on board an English schooner which was buying fresh salmon to be taken to London in refrigerators. There was much commotion on board because one of the sailors had just been killed by a fall from the rigging. The captain was anxious to sail, but did not dare to put to sea with less than the legal number of men. Observing Narve's sailor-like appearance, he offered him on the spur of the moment two pounds and free passage home again, if he would go with him.
"I sha'n't want the passage back," said Narve; "but if you'll allow me, instead, to take my brother along, who is ill, I am your man."
"All right," said the captain.
And so it was settled. Narve felt as if his body were an imponderable quantity, as he tumbled down into the boat, rowed ashore, and with feverish anxiety hastened to Paul's room. Ah, there he lay, his mouth pinched, as if in death, his cheeks hollow, his eyes listlessly closed. Narve stood for a moment paralyzed with dread. He bounded across the floor and grasped his brother's hand. God be praised, there was yet life in it.
"Brother," he cried, exultingly, "we are going."
There came a spark of consciousness into the invalid's half-quenched eyes, as he murmured, "Yes—I am going—brother—to God."
