'Granddad, Granddad! look up!--it is Marjorie. Have you forgotten your niece, Marjorie Wells? And this is little Edgar, Marjorie's son! Speak to him, Edgar, speak to granddad. Alack, this is one of his dark days, and he knoweth no one.' In the arm-chair of carven oak stained black as ebony by the smokes of many years, and placed in the great hall where the yule log is burning, the old man sits as he has sat every day since last winter; speechless, to all seeming sightless; faintly smiling and nodding from time to time when ...
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'Granddad, Granddad! look up!--it is Marjorie. Have you forgotten your niece, Marjorie Wells? And this is little Edgar, Marjorie's son! Speak to him, Edgar, speak to granddad. Alack, this is one of his dark days, and he knoweth no one.' In the arm-chair of carven oak stained black as ebony by the smokes of many years, and placed in the great hall where the yule log is burning, the old man sits as he has sat every day since last winter; speechless, to all seeming sightless; faintly smiling and nodding from time to time when well shaken into consciousness by some kindly hand, and then relapsing into stupor. He is paralysed from the waist downwards. His deeply wrinkled face is ashen gray and perfectly bloodless, set in its frame of snow-white hair; hair that has once been curly and light, and still falls in thin white ringlets on the stooping shoulders; his hands are shrivelled to thinnest bone and parchment; his eyes, sunken deep beneath the brows, give forth little or no glimmer of the fire of life. Ninety years old. The ruin, or wreck, of what has once been a gigantic man. The frame is still gigantic, and shows the mighty mould in which the man was made; the great head, with its brood overhanging brows and square powerful jaw, is like the head of an aged lion of Africa, toothless and gray with time. Kick the great log, and as the sparks fly up the chimney thick as bees from out a hive, his eyes open a little, and he seems faintly conscious of the flame. Flash the lamp into his sunken eyes, and as he mutters curiously to himself, and fumbles with thin hands upon his knees, a faint flash of consciousness comes from the smouldering brand of brain within. He is not always so inert as now. This, as the grave matron who is bending over him says, is one of his dark days. Sometimes he will look around and talk feebly to his children's children, and seem to listen as some one reads out of the great family Bible which stands ever near his elbow; and the gray old face will smile gently, and the thin worn hand lie lightly as a leaf on some flaxen head. But to-night, though it is Christmas Eve, and all the kinsfolk of the house are gathered together, he knows no one, and sees and hears nothing. He breathes, and that is all.
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