Not a soul to carry the cup of cold water, did I say?  Yes, one timid little soul there was, waiting in a fever of longing herself—­waiting that those who had a right to go might do so if they would—­waiting till assured that neither Frarnie Maurice nor her parents had the first intention of going, though affianced husband and chosen son lay dying there—­waiting in agony of impatience, since every delay might possibly mean death,—­one little brave and timid soul there was who ventured forth on her errand of mercy alone.  The fisherman’s old boat still lay rocking in the cove, and the oars stood in the shed:  Louie knew how to use them well, and making her preparations by daylight, and leaving the rest till nightfall, lest she should be hindered by the authorities, she found means to impress the little cow-boy into her service; and after dark a keg of sweet water was trundled down and stored amidships of the boat, with an enormous block of ice rolled in an old blanket; a basket of lemons and oranges was added, a roll of fresh bed-linen, a little box of such medicines as her last year’s practice had taught her might be of use; and extorting a promise from the boy that he would leave another block of ice on the bank every night after dark for her to come and fetch, Louie quickly stepped into the boat, lifted the oars, and slipt away into the darkness of the great and quiet river.

When, three days afterward, Captain Traverse unclosed his eyes from a dream of Gehenna and the place the smoke of whose torment goes up for ever, a strange confusion crept like a haze across his mind, tired out and tortured with delirium, and he dropped the aching lids and fell away into slumber again; for he had thought himself vexed with the creak of cordage and noise of feet, stived in his dark and narrow cabin, on a filthy bed in a foul air, if any air at all were in that noisome place, reeking with heat and the ferment of bilge-water and fever-smell; and here, unless a new delirium chained him, a mattress lay upon the deck with the awning of an old sail stretched above it and making soft shadow out of searching sun, a gentle wind was blowing over him, a land-breeze full of sweet scents from the gardens on the shore, from the meadows and the marshes.  Silence broken only by a soft wash of water surrounded him; a flake of ice lay between his lips, that had lately been parched and withering, and delicious coolness swathed his head, that had seemed to be a ball of burning fire.  The last that he remembered had been a hot, dry, aching agony, and this was bliss:  the sleep into which he fell when waking from the stupor that had benumbed his power of suffering—­a power that had rioted till no more could be suffered—­lasted during all the spell of that fervid noon sun that hung above the harbor and the town like the unbroken seal of the expected pestilence.  A strange still town, fear and heat keeping its streets deserted, its people longing for an east wind that should kill the fever,