“Poor Hugh!” Alice sighed, as Muggins ran off for the flowers, which she brought to Miss Johnson, who arranged them into beautiful bouquets for the sick man now just at the gate. Alice saw the carriage as it stopped, and saw the tall form which the men were helping up the walk; and that was all she saw, so busily was she occupied in hushing the outcries of the excitable negroes, while Hugh was carried to the room designated by Densie, and into which he went unwillingly. “It was not his den,” he said, drawing back with a bewildered look; “his was hot, and close, and dingy, while this was nice and cool—a room such as women had; there must be a mistake,” and he begged of them to take him away. “No, ho, my poor boy. This is right; Miss Johnson said you must come here just because it is cool and nice. You’ll get well so must faster,” and Aunt Eunice’s tears dropped on Hugh’s flushed face. “Miss Johnson!” and the wild eyes looked up eagerly at her. “Who is she? Oh, yes, I know, I know,” and a moan came from his lips as he whispered, “Does she know I’ve come? Does it make her hate me worse to see me in such a plight? Ho, Aunt Eunice, put your ear down close while I tell you something. Ad said—you know Ad—she said I was—I was—I can’t tell you what she said for this buzzing in my head. Am I very sick, Aunt Eunice?” and about the chin there was a quivering motion, which betokened a ray of consciousness, as the brown eyes scanned the kind, motherly face bending over him. “Yes, Hugh, you are very sick,” and Aunt Eunice’s tears dropped upon the face of her boy, so fearfully changed since yesterday. He wiped them away himself, and looked inquiringly at her. “Am I so sick that it makes you cry? Is it the fever I’ve got?” “Yes, Hugh, the fever,” and Aunt Eunice bowed her face upon his burning hands. For a moment he lay unconscious, then raising himself up, he fixed his eyes piercingly upon her, and whispered hoarsely, “Aunt Eunice, I shall die! I have never been sick in my life; and the fever goes hard with such. I shall surely die. It’s been days in coming on, and I thought to fight it off, I don’t want to die. I’m not prepared,” and in the once strong man’s voice there was a note of fear, such as only the dread of death could have wrung from him. “Aunt Eunice,” and the voice was now a kind of sob, “tell Adah and Sam to pray. I shall lose my senses soon, they go and come so fast; and tell Miss Johnson, (I’ve heard that she too prays) tell her when she watches by me, as perhaps she will, tell her to pray, though I do not hear it, pray that I need not die, not yet, not yet. Oh if I had prayed sooner, prayed before,” and the white lips moved as if uttering now the petitions too long left unsaid. Then the mind wandered again, and Hugh talked of Alice and Golden Hair, not as one and the same, but as two distinct individuals, and then he spoke of his mother.