"'She's the same to me as dead,' she said. 'I mourned her sharp enough, but it ain't in nature to take one again after they've been thought dead; an' you know they're straight from corruption itself. There's places for her to go if she's tired of wickedness, but I don't want to see her bold face, an' her head high, as if she was respectable. An' I don't want to be plagued no more. I don't deny I lotted on her before she was took away, but I never want to think about her again; so you needn't come nor send. I've said my say, an' I hope the Lord will save her.' "'It's good He's more merciful than His creatures,' I said; an' I went away more angry than I ever want to get. I couldn't quite make it out--I can't to this day--how she could mourn so over the child, an' yet never have a thought for all the years she'd had to suffer. "There came a month that everything crowded. I thought of Nan, but couldn't go up, till one day Tom Owens came in--you know him--an' he said, 'It's all up with Charley Calkins.' "'How?' I said. "'Smallpox,' he said, 'an' Nan's dropped everything to nurse him. She'd left there, they said, an' the woman he brought in to take her place cut the minute she found he had the smallpox. He won't live, they say.' "This was before they were so particular about carrying them off to hospital. The house was cleared an' the saloon shut up, but Nan was allowed to stay because she'd been exposed anyway, an' it was no use to send her off. He had it the worst way, an' he'd scream an' swear he wouldn't die, an' strike out at her, though he couldn't see, his face and eyes bein' all closed up. It didn't last but a week, and then he died, but Nan hadn't taken off her clothes or hardly slept one instant. He was stupid at the last, an' when she saw he was gone she fell on the floor in a faint; an' when she come to the blood poured from her mouth, an' all they could do was to take her off to the hospital. She didn't take the smallpox, but it was a good while before she could be let to see anybody. When they thought it was safe she sent for me, but it was hard to think it could be the same Nan I'd known. Every breath come with pain, and she was wasted to a shadow, but she smiled at me an' drew me down to kiss her. 'You see, I sha'n't be troubled or make trouble much longer,' she said, 'but oh, if I only could rest!' "Poor soul! She couldn't breathe lyin' down, nor sleep but a bit at a time, an' it was awful to have her goin' so, an' she not twenty. "I knelt down by her. She had a little room to herself, for she had some money yet, and I prayed till I couldn't speak for crying. 'Nan, Nan!' I said, 'you're goin' straight to the next world, an' you've got to be judged. What will you do without a Saviour? Try to think about it.'