It was night; few people were abroad; the death-carts, lighted by torches in the hands of men walking ahead, trundled through the streets; at each door marked with the dreaded sign a sad, wrapped form was thrust out and thrown into the vehicle with its fellows in death. Torches glimmered in the potter's-field, as the young man passed; dim figures were digging, digging; the place was scarred as by a plow. Anthony approached Bush Hill across the fields; a veil of insects hummed in the glare from its open windows; a stench seemed to drip from it; now and then the roar of drunken carnival came from its recesses. He went in. The sick were huddled on dirty straw, filthy, abandoned, terrible in the smoky lamplight; they moaned and called for water; they raved and babbled and cursed in their utter wretchedness. The awful dead, stark and neglected, were on every side. "In God's name!" said Anthony. At his feet a woman was gasping: she was a Spanish woman; she held tightly to a brass crucifix, and called upon angels and saints, upon glorious martyrs and confessors to see her die. O immaculate heart of God! Most holy and exalted Virgin! Cherubim! Pillars of high heaven! Shining archangels! A naïve paradise was strewn about her in the filth; the way of death was ranked with the holy, gathered to watch her pass. "Water!" A man lifted himself out of the dirty straw. "If there's a human heart in this place, and a hand that's able to give it--water!" A woman moved forward with a cup; after the man had drunk she eased him back, and, as she turned, Anthony saw it was Mademoiselle Lafargue. "Here!" said he, startled. "Some one must do it," she said. "Are there no nurses?" The roar of drunken carnival lifted from the recesses of the buildings; shrieks of laughter and screamed curses rose with it. "Those are the nurses," she said. "None would risk death but them; and they are here not to care for the sick but to eat and drink what has been given for the comfort of the sick." "How long have you been here?"' "I come for a time each day, but I am able to do very little." Anthony looked about at the piteous horror of the place. "I wonder," he said, "that you have been able to do anything. It seems beyond human help."