Mary ran to her own bed, seized a basin of cold tea that her kindly persuasion had obtained from one of the nurses, and held it to the burning lips of the patient. Then she began to smooth down those long tresses with her hands, and by a thousand gentle movements intuitive to her womanly nature, quieted the delirium that had seized upon the poor girl afresh during the loneliness of night. As Mary Margaret was performing these kindly offices, she happened to turn her eyes toward a corner of the room. There was nurse Kelly, not asleep, as she had at first supposed, but with her arms folded on a little board table, her chin resting upon them, and her eyes peering angrily through the light shed from a smoky lamp hung behind her on the wall. Sharp and angry as the notice of a rattlesnake, came that glance through the darkness; and Mary Margaret’s hands shook as she sat down the basin of tea with a sort of nervous terror. Still she was too brave and too earnest for anything like an ignominious retreat, even from the glare of those eyes. The poor, young patient was relieved by the drink so kindly given, and lay very quietly, unconscious of the malignant influence that had crept even to her pauper couch, unmindful of the gentle care that fell like dew around her. But the noble Irish woman lingered at her post with an instinctive feeling that she was needed to keep watch and ward over that frail life. But young Ireland in the other cot had at last become heartily dissatisfied with the state of things in that neighborhood. The mouth from which his tiny fist was withdrawn now filled with indignant cries, and Mary Margaret, hastily gathering the skirt around her shoulders, ran back to silence the little rebel before he disturbed every patient in the ward. She lay down by the child outside the bed, supporting herself on one elbow, for some holy instinct still kept her on the watch. After she had rested a while, and the voice of young Ireland had subsided into satisfied and half-cooing murmurs, she saw the nurse arise cautiously, open a drawer of the table, and steal round to Catharine Lacy’s bed, over which she hovered a moment and disappeared in her corner again. Then came a few moments of silence, broken only by the deep breathing of the sleepers and a restless moan or two from the young woman’s cot. CHAPTER VIII. THE VIAL OF WHITE MEDICINE. Mary Margaret was strangely wakeful, and as her child sunk off to rest, she left her bed again and stole down the ward to see if her charge slept. Then the nurse arose and came boldly forward. A strange, wheedling smile hung around her lips, and there was something in her look that made Mary Margaret shudder.