e a white face lay.

"Really, I have nothing else to do to-day, you know," he remarked in an
apologetic way to himself, as he and his umbrella went along the old
road; and he repeated the remark as he entered the room where the man
lay, just as he had fancied, on the damp straw.

"The weather _is_ unpleasant," said the man. "Pomp, bring a chair."

Pomp brought one, the only one, and the visitor sat down. A fire
smoldered on the hearth and puffed out acrid smoke now and then, as if
the rain had clogged the soot in the long-neglected chimney; from the
streaked ceiling oozing drops fell with a dull splash into little pools
on the decayed floor; the door would not close; the broken panes were
stopped with rags, as if the old servant had tried to keep out the damp;
in the ashes a corn-cake was baking.

"I am afraid you have not been so well during these long rainy days,"
said the keeper, scanning the face on the straw.

"My old enemy, rheumatism," answered the man; "the first sunshine will
drive it away."

They talked awhile, or rather the keeper talked, for the other seemed
hardly able to speak, as the waves of pain swept over him; then the
visitor went outside and called Pomp out. "_Is_ there any one to help
him, or not?" he asked impatiently.

"Fine fambly, befo' de war," began Pomp.

"Never mind all that; is there any one to help him now--yes or no?"

"No," said the old black with a burst of despairing truthfulness. "Miss
Bettina, she's as poor as Mars' Ward, an' dere's no one else. He's had
noth'n but hard corn-cake for three days, an' he can't swaller it no
more."

The next morning saw Ward De Rosset lying on the white pallet in the
keeper's cottage, and old Pomp, marveling at the cleanliness all around
him, installed as nurse. A strange asylum for a Confederate soldier, was
it not? But he knew nothing of the change, which he would have fought
with his last breath if consciousness had remained; returning fever,
however, had absorbed his senses, and then it was that the keeper and
the slave had borne him slowly across the waste, resting many times, but
accomplishing the journey at last.

That evening John Rodman, strolling to and fro in the dusky twilight,
paused alongside of the other Rodman. "I do not want him here, and that
is the plain truth," he said, pursuing the current of his thoughts. "He
fills the house; he and Pomp together disturb all my ways. He'll be
ready to fling a brick at me too, when his