Page:Stimson--Pirate gold.djvu/216

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206
PIRATE GOLD.

still lay there, unconscious of earthly things. For many weeks, his spirit, like a tired bird, had hovered between this world and the next, uncertain where to alight.

For many weeks he had been, as we call it, out of his head. Harley had had time to go to New Orleans and return, Mercedes and Soto to die, and all these meetings about less important things to happen at the bank; and still old Jamie's body lay in the little house in Salem Street, his mind far wandering. But in all his sixty years of gray life, up to then, I doubt if his soul had been so happy. Dare we even say it was less real? Old Mr. Bowdoin laid the chest beside the door, and listened.

For Jamie was wandering with Mercedes under sunny skies; and now, for many days, his ravings had not been of money or of this world's duty, but only of her. It had been so from about the time she must have died; dare one suppose he knew it? So his mind was still with her.

The doctors, though, were very anxious for his mind, still wandering. If his body returned to life, they feared that his mind would