Page:The gold brick (1910).djvu/245

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stood by the bed, waiting to perform her last office for the dying man.

Carroll timidly approached and looked down at the long form, scarcely outlined by the sheet, at the rigid head, at the great, waxen brow, at the little blue spheres formed by the closed eyelids, at the mouth slightly open beneath the white mustache with its tinge of yellow. Doctor Foerder was pressing his fingers to the colonel's wrist. The breathing had lost all human quality, it was but a series of automatic gasps, which, it seemed, would never end. Finally they grew shorter, at last they ceased, there was one faint inspiration, and Doctor Foerder, laying the thin old hand down upon the colonel's breast, said:

"It's all over."

There was silence for a whole minute. Then Doctor Lambert tossed up the window, and Carroll heard, in the street below, a crowd shuffling over the sidewalk, a crowd coming, as he knew, from the convention in Italia Hall. And suddenly from the crowd arose a raucous, drunken yell:

"Hurrah for Warren!"