By and by, when the patient could be left for a moment again, Zerviah came to the air once more. He drew in great breaths of the now cooler night. The red pool was gone. All the world was filled with the fatal beauty of the purple colors that he had learned to know so well. The swamps seemed to be asleep, and to exhale in the slow, regular pulsations of sleep. In the town, lamps were lighted. From a hundred windows, fair, fine sparks shone like stars as the nurse looked over. There, a hundred watchers tended their sick or dead, or their healing, dearly loved, and guarded ones. Dying eyes looked their last at eyes that would have died to save them; strengthening hands clasped hands that had girded them with the iron of love's tenderness, through the valley of the shadow, and up the heights of life and light. Over there, in some happy home, tremulous lips that the plague had parted met to-night in their first kiss of thanksgiving. Zerviah thought of these things. He had never felt so lonely before. It seemed a hard place for a man to die in. Poor Scip! Zerviah clasped his thin hands and looked up at the purple sky. "Lord," he said, "it is my duty. I came South to do my duty. Because he told of me, had I ought to turn against him? It is a lonesome place; he's got it hard, but I'll stand by him.... Lord!"--his worn face became suddenly suffused, and flashed, transfigured, as he lifted it--"Lord God Almighty! You stood by me! _I_ couldn't have been a pleasant fellow to look after. You stood by _me_ in my scrape! I hadn't treated _You_ any too well.... You needn't be afraid I'll leave the creetur." He went back into the hut. Scip called, and he hurried in. The nurse and the plague, like two living combatants, met in the miserable place and battled for the negro. The white Southern stars blazed out. How clean they looked! Zerviah could see them through the window, where the wooden shutter had flapped back. They looked well and wholesome--holy, he thought. He remembered to have heard some one say, at a Sunday meeting he happened into once, years ago, that the word holiness meant health. He wondered what it would be like, to be holy. He wondered what kinds of people would be holy people, say, after a man was dead. Women, he thought,--good women, and honest men who had never done a deadly deed. He occupied his thoughts in this way. He looked often from the cold stars to the warm lights throbbing in the town. They were both company to him. He began to feel less alone. There was a special service called somewhere in the city that night, to read the prayers for the sick and dying. The wind rose feebly, and bore the sound of the church-bells to the hut. There was a great deal of company, too, in the bells. He remembered that it was Sunday night. * * * * *