like a great pool. He felt less lonely to see the
town, and the smoke now and then from chimneys. He thought how many
people loved and cared for one another in the suffering place. He
thought how much love and care suffering gave birth to, in human
hearts. He began to think a little of his own suffering; then Scip
called him, sobbing wretchedly. Scip was very sick. Hope had sent for
Dr. Dare. She had not come. Scip was too sick to be left. The nurse
found his duty with the negro. Scip was growing worse.

By and by, when the patient could be left for a moment again, Zerviah
came to the air once more. He drew in great breaths of the now cooler
night. The red pool was gone. All the world was filled with the fatal
beauty of the purple colors that he had learned to know so well. The
swamps seemed to be asleep, and to exhale in the slow, regular
pulsations of sleep. In the town, lamps were lighted. From a hundred
windows, fair, fine sparks shone like stars as the nurse looked over.
There, a hundred watchers tended their sick or dead, or their healing,
dearly loved, and guarded ones. Dying eyes looked their last at eyes
that would have died to save them; strengthening hands clasped hands
that had girded them with the iron of love's tenderness, through the
valley of the shadow, and up the heights of life and light. Over
there, in some happy home, tremulous lips that the plague had parted
met to-night in their first kiss of thanksgiving.

Zerviah thought of these things. He had never felt so lonely before.
It seemed a hard place for a man to die in. Poor Scip!

Zerviah clasped his thin hands and looked up at the purple sky.

"Lord," he said, "it is my duty. I came South to do my duty. Because
he told of me, had I ought to turn against him? It is a lonesome
place; he's got it hard, but I'll stand by him.... Lord!"--his worn
face became suddenly suffused, and flashed, transfigured, as he lifted
it--"Lord God Almighty! You stood by me! _I_ couldn't have been a
pleasant fellow to look after. You stood by _me_ in my scrape! I
hadn't treated _You_ any too well.... You needn't be afraid I'll leave
the creetur."

He went back into the hut. Scip called, and he hurried in. The nurse
and the plague, like two living combatants, met in the miserable place
and battled for the negro.

The white Southern stars blazed out. How clean they looked! Zerviah
could see them through the window, where the wooden shutter had
flapped back. They loo