tween the sick-chambers of Reisen and his wife, "I hope you'll not
think it foolhardy for me to expose myself by nursing these people"--

"No," replied the veteran, in a tone of indifference, and passed on; the
tincture of self-approval that had "mixed" with Richling's motives went
away to nothing.

Both Reisen and his wife recovered. But an apple-cheeked brother of the
baker, still in a green cap and coat that he had come in from Germany,
was struck from the first with that mortal terror which is so often an
evil symptom of the disease, and died, on the fifth day after his
attack, in raging delirium. Ten of the workmen, bakers and others,
followed him. Richling alone, of all in the establishment, while the
sick lay scattered through the town on uncounted thousands of beds, and
the month of October passed by, bringing death to eleven hundred more,
escaped untouched of the scourge.

"I can't understand it," he said.

"Demand an immediate explanation," said Dr. Sevier, with sombre irony.

How did others fare? Ristofalo had, time and again, sailed with the
fever, nursed it, slept with it. It passed him by again. Little Mike
took it, lay two or three days very still in his mother's strong arms,
and recovered. Madame Ristofalo had had it in "fifty-three." She became
a heroic nurse to many, and saved life after life among the poor.

The trials of those days enriched John Richling in the acquaintanceship
and esteem of Sister Jane's little lisping rector. And, by the way, none
of those with whom Dr. Sevier dined on that darkest night of Richling's
life became victims. The rector had never encountered the disease
before, but when Sister Jane and the banker, and the banker's family and
friends, and thousands of others, fled, he ran toward it, David-like,
swordless and armorless. He and Richling were nearly of equal age. Three
times, four times, and again, they met at dying-beds. They became fond
of each other.

Another brave nurse was Narcisse. Dr. Sevier, it is true, could not get
rid of the conviction for years afterward that one victim would have
lived had not Narcisse talked him to death. But in general, where
there was some one near to prevent his telling all his discoveries and
inventions, he did good service, and accompanied it with very chivalric
emotions.

"Yesseh," he said, with a strutting attitude that somehow retained a
sort of modesty, "I 'ad the gweatess success. Hah! a nuss is a nuss
those time'. Only som