on top o' that she would go back to the village, and it was raining, and
so dark you could scurce see the road; but she'd made up her mind to go
South and find you, and so we couldn't persuade her to stop over night.
But the next day, when she come back to tell us when she was going to
start for Dixie, she was took down right here, that suddin. There's been
a good deal of that sickness round here sense, and fatalish, most
always. But I tell 'em it took the smartest of the lot off first, when
it took Nancy."

The doctor stood there when the teller of this story had stopped
speaking. He was not looking at _him_,--of that the old man was certain.
He seemed to be looking nowhere, and to see nothing that was near or
visible.

"Come into the house and take something," said Uncle Elkins, for he
began to be alarmed.

"Was Janet here?" asked the doctor, as if he had not heard the
invitation.

"We had to send for her. Nancy was calling for her all the time," said
Farmer Elkins, as if he doubted how far this story ought to be
continued, for he did not understand the man before him. He only knew
that once he had fallen down on his door-step, and lain helpless beneath
his roof hard on to two months; and he watched him now as if he
anticipated some renewal of that old attack,--and there was no Nancy now
to nurse, and watch, and slave herself to death for him; for that was
the way folk in the house were talking about Nancy and her husband in
these days.

"Did she get here in time? Who went after her?"

"The minister went. We had 'em here a fortnight,--well on to 't."

"What, the minister, too?"

"No, I mean the young woman who come from Charlestown with Jenny. Her
name was--" He paused long, endeavoring to recall that name. It trembled
on the doctor's lips, but he did not utter it. At last said Farmer
Elkins, "There! it was Miss Amey,--Amey? Yes. She took the little girl
back hum with her. It was right in there, in the room where you had that
spell of fever of yourn. She got you well through that! Ef anything
could 'a' brought her through that turn, your letter would. It came
across my mind once that, as she'd saved _your_ life, may be you was
going to save hern by that are letter! And she was so determined to get
to your hospital!"

"Thank God she got the letter, any way!" exclaimed the doctor.

At that the old man walked into the house to set its best cheer before
Nancy's husband, who looked so much like a mourner as