yet dreading lest it should blow the fever in on them; a strange still harbor, its great peaceful river darkened only by that blot where the sun-soaked craft swung at her anchor; a strange still craft, where nothing stirred but one slender form, one little being that went about laying wet cloths upon this rude sailor’s head, broken ice between the lips of that one, moistening dry palms, measuring out cooling draughts, and only resting now and then to watch one sleeper sleep, to hang and hear if in that deep dream there were any breathing and it were not the last sleep of all.  And in Louie’s heart there was something just as strange and still as in all other things throughout that wearing, blinding day; but with her the calm was not of fear, only of unspeakable joy; for if Andrew lived it was she that had saved him, and though he died, his delirium had told her that his heart was hers.  “If he dies, he is mine!” she cried triumphantly, forgetting all the long struggle of scruple and doubt, “and if he lives, he shall never be hers!” she cried softly and with that inner voice that no one hears.

And so the heat slipped down with the sun to other horizons, coolness crept in upon the running river’s breast with the dusk, dew gathered and lay darkly glittering on rail and spar and shroud as star by star stole out to sparkle in it; and Andrew raised his eyes at length, and they rested long and unwaveringly on the little figure sitting not far away with hands crossed about the knees and eyes looking out into the last light—­the tranquil, happy face from which a white handkerchief kept back the flying hair while giving it the likeness of a nun’s.  Was it a dream?  Was it Louie?  Or was it only some one of the tormenting phantoms that for so many burning days had haunted him?  He tried in vain to ask:  his tongue clove to the roof of his mouth; he seemed to be in the power of one of those fierce nightmares where life depends on a word and the word is not to be spoken.  Only a vision, then:  he closed his lids thinking it would be gone when he lifted them, but he did not want it to be gone, and looked again to find it as before.  And by and by it seemed to him that long since, in a far-off dream, he had gathered strength and uttered the one thought of his fever, “Louie, what do you do now?” and she had answered him, as though she thought aloud, “I stroke the dead;” and he had cried out, “Then presently me too, me too!  And let the shroud be shotted heavily to bury me out of your sight!” And he was crying it out again, but while he spoke a mouth was laid on his—­a warm, sweet mouth that seemed to breathe fresh spirit through his frame—­his head was lifted and pillowed on a breast where he could hear the heart beneath flutter like a happy bird, and he was wrapped once more in slumber, but this time slumber sweet as it was deep.