"'Where's Samba?' he cried. 'Tell him to carry a glass of wine in
to the general. 1 do not like his looks. I am going upstairs for
some medicine.' This he whispered in choked tones as he set foot
on the stairs. Why I remember it I do not know, for Reuben, who
was standing where he could look into the library when our father
came out and saw the settle and the general sitting at one end of
it, was chattering about it in my ear at the very moment our father
was giving his orders.
"'Reuben is a man now, and I have asked him more than once since
then how the general looked at that critical instant. It is
important to me, very, very important, and to him, too, now that
he has come to know a man's passions and temptations. But he will
never tell me, never relieve my mind, and I can only hope that
there were real signs of illness on the general's brow; for then I
could feel that all had been right and that his death was the
natural result of the great distress he felt at opposing my father
in the one desire of his heart. That glimpse which Reuben had of
him before he fell has always struck me with strange pathos. A
little child looking in upon a man, who, for all his apparent
health, will in another moment be in eternity - I do not wonder he
does not like to talk of it, and yet -
"'It was Samba who came upon the general first.
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