The sick-room was small, with reasonably high walls, lighted by two windows, fronting the public road and at the side of the invalid’s bed. Its furniture was poor and scant. There was an old-fashioned chest of drawers, not as high as a bureau, but taller than a trunk, made of pine, painted a dark red, on the lid of which stood some medicine bottles and an empty tumbler and spoon. Near by was a bit of cracker, which the sick man had nibbled with his teeth when besought to take some nourishment. The bedstead had high posts, and the bed and coverings were barely comfortable. Near the foot of the bed stood a high-backed, splint-bottom rocking-chair, with neat tidy over the top. Two or three other chairs and a small table completed the furniture of the apartment. No carpet concealed the floor, the boards of which were scrubbed white and clean. Plain bleached cotton formed the looped-up window curtains, and along the wall were nails, on which hung a soldier’s overcoat, a hat, a heavy teamster’s whip, and then several articles of female costume. At the head of the couch was a cheap print of St. Patrick, without a frame, and on the opposite wall a cross, entwined with real shamrock, the emblems worked with a needle in red worsted upon some gilt paste-board. A door led into the hall, at the head of the stairs. At one side of the center of the room was a sheet-iron heater, fed through a pipe from the apartments below, which came up through the floor by a tin thimble, or protector, and kept the atmosphere warm and equable. A small hat-stand supported the bottles of beer and a couple of common flaring beer tumblers.