Then Henry sat down and betook himself to argument. It would be folly to lose the first opening to employment that had presented itself. He grieved indeed to leave his sisters in this desolate, unhealthy place; but they were as essentially safe as at Stoneborough; their living alone for a few weeks, or at most months, would be far less remarkable here than there; and he would be likely to be able to improve or to alter their present situation, whereas they were now sinking deeper and more hopelessly into poverty every day. Then, too, he read aloud piteous accounts of the want of medical attendance, showing that it was absolutely a cruelty to detain such assistance from the sick and wounded. This argument was the one most appreciated by Averil and Minna. The rest were but questions of prudence; this touched their hearts. Men lying in close tents, or in crowded holds of ships, with festering wounds and fevered lips, without a hand to help them--some, too, whom they had seen at New York, and whose exulting departure they had witnessed--sufferers among whom their own Cora's favourite brother might at any moment be numbered--the thought brought a glow of indignation against themselves for having wished to withhold him. 'Yes, go, Henry; it is right, and you shall hear not another word of objection,' said Averil. 'You can write or telegraph the instant you want me. And it will be for a short time,' said Henry, half repenting when the opposition had given way. 'Oh, we shall get on very well,' said Minna, cheerfully; 'better, perhaps for you know we don't mind Far West manners; and I'll have learnt to do all sorts of things as well as Cora when you come home!' And Henry, after a year's famine of practice, was in better spirits than since that fatal summer morning. Averil felt how different a man is in his vocation, and deprived of it. 'Oh yes,' she said to herself, 'if I had let ourselves be a drag on him when he is so much needed, I could never have had the face to write to our dear sufferer at home in his noble patience. It is better that we should be desolate than that he should be a wreck, or than that mass of sickness should be left untended! And the more desolate, the more sure of One Protector.' There was true heroism in the spirit in which this young girl braced herself to uncomplaining acceptance of desertion in this unwholesome swamp, with her two little ailing sisters, beside the sluggish stream, amid the skeleton trees--heroism the greater because there was no enthusiastic patriotism to uphold her--it was only the land of her captivity, whence she looked towards home like Judah to Jerusalem. CHAPTER XXIII Prisoner of hope thou art; look up and sing, In hope of promised spring. Christian Year