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actually starving, as well as sick. Give them all the assistance you can. Rich people can take care of themselves, but the poor cannot." This was faithfully promised, and, we may add, just as faithfully performed. During the next ten days Agnes was kept continually busy, night and day, in her arduous and dangerous duties. But by strict adherence to her original design and method, she kept herself in perfect health and spirits, and in the midst of her labors and anxieties she found time to send daily messages to her mother. On the succeeding Monday, while nursing a poor woman in the northern part of the city, a note was brought to her by the dead-wagon man--the same genius with whom Agnes had had the encounter. "Missus Agonyess," said he, trying to pronounce her name correctly, as he remembered the correction--an effort which betrayed him into a double error--"I wuz asked to fetch this here letter to you. It wuz giv to me by a black feller who's a nussin' in the little hospital. A young man guv it to him last night, and promised to give him his gold watch ef he'd find you out and git it to yer." "Hospital--young man--gold watch!" ejaculated Agnes in a disjointed way, as she took the letter. A glance at the handwriting was sufficient, and her face grew deadly white as she opened and read: "Agnes--Angel Agnes, I hear they call you--and they may well call you that--darling, I found out the trick by which we were estranged. I was foolish, I was wrong to treat you so. And when I learned you had come here into this pest-hole, I was crazy with anxiety for fear you would take the fever and die. I did not know how I _did_ love you till then. God forgive me, guilty wretch that I am, for driving you to such a desperate piece of romance. I came here to tell you how sorry I was, and to ask you to take me bask to my old place in your heart. But now I am afraid it is too late. I have been hanging around the town a week or longer, trying to get in on some train. Not succeeding in my object this way, I have been obliged to walk in by night, concealing myself in the daytime, and walking forward again in the darkness. Thus I have eluded them, and got in. But so far I have been unable to find you, and now I fear it too late, for I am sick with the fever in the hospital. "I have given myself up to die, for they are not especially kind or attentive to me, as they think I ought to have stayed away, and not come in and added
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