"Go and rest, dear; go and rest," he whispered more than once. "Let
Wilkins come: this is too much for you. I thought it would be
easier, but I am so strong life fights for me inch by inch."
But Christie would not go, and for her sake David made haste to die.
Hour after hour the tide ebbed fast, hour after hour the man's
patient soul sat waiting for release, and hour after hour the
woman's passionate heart clung to the love that seemed drifting away
leaving her alone upon the shore. Once or twice she could not bear
it, and cried out in her despair:
"No, it is not just that you should suffer this for a creature whose
whole life is not worth a day of your brave, useful, precious one!
Why did you pay such a price for that girl's liberty?" she said, as
the thought of her own wrecked future fell upon her dark and heavy.
"Because I owed it;--she suffered more than this seeing her baby
die;--I thought of you in her place, and I could not help doing it."
The broken answer, the reproachful look, wrung Christie's heart, and
she was silent: for, in all the knightly tales she loved so well,
what Sir Galahad had rescued a more wretched, wronged, and helpless
woman than the poor soul whose dead baby David buried tenderly
before he bought the mother's freedom with his life?
Only one regret escaped him as the end drew very near, and mortal
weakness brought relief from mortal pain.
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