mething of the work that was to be done, but there did not
seem to be the smallest prospect of a commencement.

Christmas came and went. The eve was not an unpleasant one to Noll,
though he remembered all too well what a blithe evening the last
Christmas-eve had been, and could not help thinking yearningly of the
dear friends gathered merrily together across the sea, and wonder
whether he was missed from the throng, as he sat by the fire all the
solitary evening.

CHAPTER XIII.

THE WINTER'S WANING.

Dirk's little one was not the only fever-stricken sleeper that was
laid to rest in the dreary little burying-ground that winter. The
fever, born of want and filth and exposure, lingered among the
wretched huts, taking down the strong men and wasting the lives of the
little ones, till, after weary lingering, they flickered out. Of
course the sick ones had but the poorest of care and the rudest of
medical aid. The people were disheartened and apathetic, and seemed to
have no idea of cleansing their habitations or reforming their way of
living. Noll once ventured to hint to Dirk, with whom he was more
intimately acquainted than the others, that cleanliness and care might
do much toward ridding them of the haunting fever. The fisherman
stared blankly at this suggestion, and replied,--

"It mought do fur the like o' ye, lad; but we be poor folks, an' I
don't think 'tw'u'd do the good ye think. The fever be come, an' it be
goin' to stay till we be all lyin' up in the sand yender."

So the sickness lingered, meeting no resistance and no attempts to
check its progress. It smote heaviest the little ones just toddling
about, and who had not enough of strength and endurance in their
little bodies to resist the slowly-destroying fever. So Dirk's
treasure did not sleep alone in the sand, for many another father's
was there to keep it company. Oh! the weariness of the days, the slow
dragging of the weeks! When the sickness seemed to have spent itself,
and hope was beginning to flicker up, back came the destroyer and fell
upon some little one whom father and mother had fondly hoped to
save,--for these Culm people, dull and ignorant though they were, had
a strong and passionate love for their children that showed itself
most vividly in these days of death,--and then the people settled into
their old apathetic despair and found no light nor comfort for their
souls.

Was it any wonder that--with all this misery and