Day after day passed, and he came not. The fever was by this time in all the cottages around her, and the little hamlet was a plague-spot that every one avoided. But, for all that, Nanna's heart condemned her cousin. She tried him by her own feelings, and found him guilty of unpardonable selfishness and neglect. And oh, how dreary are those waste places left by the loved who have deserted us! With what bitter tears we water them! Vala and David had been her last tie to love and happiness. "Thank God," she cried out in her misery, "it can only be broken once!" Vala had been in her grave a week--a week of days that turned the mother's heart gray--before Nanna heard a word of comfort. Then once more David lifted the latch of the cot and entered her presence. She was sitting still and empty-handed, and her white face and the quivering of her lips pierced him to the heart. "Nanna! Nanna!" he said. Then she rose, and looked round the lonely room, and David understood what she meant. "Nanna! Nanna!" was still all that he could say. He could find no words fit for such sorrow; but there was the truth to speak, and that might have some comfort in it. So he took her hands in his, and said gently: "Nanna! dear Nanna! your husband is dead." "I am glad of it!" she answered. "He killed Vala twice over." Her voice was low and weary, and she asked no question about the matter. "Did you think I had forgotten you, Nanna?" "Well, then, yes." "Forgotten you and Vala?" "It looked most like it. I thought you were either feared for yourself or the law." "No wonder men think ill of God, whom they do not know, when they are so ready to think ill of men, whom they do know." "O David! how could you desert me? Can you think of all that I have suffered alone? God nor man has helped me." "Poor, poor Nanna!" "If you had been ill to death, neither the words of men nor the power of the law could have kept me from your sick-bed. No, indeed! I would have risked everything to help you. Where were you at all, David?" "I was on the _Sea Rover_." "The _Sea Rover_! That is Nicol's ship. What did he do to you? What were you there for?" "I was on the _Sea Rover_ nursing your husband." "My God!" "That is the truth, Nanna. I have just finished my task." "Who sent you?" "The minister came to me with the order, and I could not win by it and face God and man again." "What said he? O David! David!" "He said, 'David Borson, there are four men ill with typhus this morning on the _Sea Rover_. The one man yet unstricken is quite broken down with fright and fatigue. The doctor says some one ought to go there. What do you think?' And I said, 'Minister, do you mean me?' And he smiled a bit and answered, 'I thought you would know your duty, David.'" "But why _your_ duty, David? Surely Vala was dearer and nearer." "The minister said, 'You are a lone man, David, and you fear God; so, then, you need not fear the fever.'"