The day before the duel I was sitting in a room when, at a slight noise, I turned around and saw my father in the doorway standing silently there and looking at me with a most sweet and beautiful expression of countenance. It was full of tenderness, and without any of the business preoccupation he sometimes had.
“John,” he said when I had discovered him, “won’t you come and sleep with me to-night?” His voice was frank, as if he had been my brother instead of my father.
That night I went to his bed, and in the morning very early he awakened me, and taking my hands in his palms, all four hands extended, he said and told me to repeat the Lord’s Prayer.
Seventy-five years have since passed over my head, and I have forgotten many things, but not that tender expression when he stood looking at me at the door, nor the prayer we made together the morning just before the duel.