He thought, while his thoughts remained his own, most tenderly and longingly of those for whom he had given his life. He remembered how many keen cares of their own they had to carry, how many ghastly deeds and sights to do and bear. It was not strange that he should not be missed. Who was he?--a disgraced, unfamiliar man, among their kin and neighborhood. Why should they think of him? he said. Yet he was glad that he could remember them. He wished his living or his dying could help them any. Things that his patients had said to him, looks that healing eyes had turned on him, little signs of human love and leaning, came back to him as he lay there, and stood around his bed, like people, in the dark hut. "_They loved me_," he said: "Lord, as true as I'm alive, they did! I'm glad I lived long enough to save life, _to save life_! I'm much obliged to You for that! I wish there was something else I could do for them.... Lord! I'd be willing to die if it would help them any. If I thought I could do anything that way, toward sending them a frost-- "No," he added, "that ain't reasonable. A frost and a human life ain't convertible coin. He don't do unreasonable things. May be I've lost my head already. But I'd be glad to. That's all. I suppose I can _ask_ You for a frost. _That's_ reason. "Lord God of earth and heaven! that made the South and North, the pestilence and destruction, the sick and well, the living and the dead, have mercy on us miserable sinners! Have mercy on the folks that pray to You, and on the folks that don't! Remember the old graves, and the new ones, and the graves that are to be opened if this hellish heat goes on, and send us a blessed frost, O Lord, _as an act of humanity_! And if that ain't the way to speak to You, remember I haven't been a praying man long enough to learn the language very well,--and that I'm pretty sick,--but that I would be glad to die--to give them--a great, white, holy frost. Lord, a frost! Lord, a cool, white, clean frost, for these poor devils that have borne so much!" At midnight of that Saturday he dozed and dreamed. He dreamed of what he had thought while Scip was sick: of what it was like, to be holy; and, sadly waking, thought of holy people--good women and honest men, who had never done a deadly deed. "I cannot be holy," thought Zerviah Hope; "but I can pray for frost." So he tried to pray for frost. But by that time he had grown confused, and his will wandered pitifully, and he saw strange sights in the little hut. It was as if he were not alone. Yet no one had come in. _She_ could not come at midnight. Strange--how strange! Who was that who walked about the hut? Who stood and looked at him? Who leaned to him? Who brooded over him? Who put arms beneath him? Who looked at him, as those look who love the sick too much to shrink from them?