"Your hand is quite cold, Minnie." Minnie, indeed, was very agitated. "I owe you my life, dear Minnie, and I want to thank you for it. It almost seems to me, after what I have been told, as if my life belonged to you. Thank you, dear little Minnie--you used to like me to call you that!--thank you a thousand thousand times. I shall never be able to repay you!" "I don't want payment, Joshua," said Minnie, when the wild beating of her heart was subdued. "It brought its own payment with it. It is, and ever will be, my sweetest remembrance. O Joshua! as the greatest unhappiness that ever could occur to me would be"--(to lose you, she was about to say, but she checked the words in time)--"to know that you would not recover, so the greatest happiness that I have ever experienced is to think that I have done you some little service." "Little service! The greatest service, the most devoted action that woman could do to man! Perhaps--who knows?--one day I may be able to repay you in my own way." As if those words were not sufficient for her, who would have given her life for his. "Stoop down Minnie!" She inclined her head to the pillow. "Little Minnie, little Minnie!" he whispered tenderly, and he placed his lips to her cheek. "Thank you for your devotion." It was fortunate for Minnie that it was dusk, and that her back was towards Mrs. Marvel, or the good mother would have had further cause for anxiety and uneasiness in Minnie's trembling form and flushed face. As it was, there was a long silence in the room; and Mrs. Marvel, approaching softly to the bed to see if Joshua was asleep, broke the happy reverie into which Minnie had fallen.