"My warmest love to dear Gracie and my darling brother Willie, and, mother, dear, do, do, all of you, take care of your health, and don't kill yourselves in that awful Memphis, and do not fail to write at earliest convenience to your "Devoted daughter, "LULU C. CONWAY." CHAPTER XXVII. "NEARER MY GOD TO THEE." "The heavier cross the easier dying. Death is a friendlier face to see; To life's decay one bids defying, From life's distress one then is free! Ah! happy he, with all his loss, Whom God hath set beneath the cross." To Captain Clendenon, who lay tossing on the bed of sickness his mother had long foreboded, the news that Lulu's letter brought was cheering in the highest degree. His clear judgment brought him to the same conclusion as his sister, and had he been well he would have instantly started for New York to take up the missing links in the old quest for the lost child of Grace. But just as the fever epidemic had come to an end, and the three jaded nurses were thinking of a return to Norfolk, the weakness that had been growing on him for months culminated in an attack of typhoid fever, that dire enemy of an enfeebled system. He had lain for two weeks now consumed with fever, tortured with pain, and inwardly chafing because the two patient women, who had thought their labors for the sick ended for the season, were now indefatigably devoted to the task of lightening, as far as mortal power could do, his intense suffering. Doctor Constant came and went with the last days of March, going out always with a look that Mrs. Clendenon and Grace--who had learned to read his countenance--felt almost hopeless at seeing. Weeks passed, and the strange fever that seemed playing "fast and loose" with the patient--that rises and falls, but never goes--kept its fiery hold on its victim. His mother was always by his side, mixing medicines, pouring cooling drinks, watching and noting every fluctuation of the disease with the grave, sad patience we often note in elderly women who have grown so used to affliction that they bear it with a fortitude impossible to younger women like Grace, who fretted and chafed and grieved at the slow disease that held her friend in its tenacious grasp. Yet she was only second in her exertions for him to the mother. It was her small, soft hand that bathed the burning forehead in sprinkling ice-water and pungent perfume; her hand that fluttered the grateful palm-leaf fan that kept such fresh and pure air around the bedside; her hand that was always ready and willing to undertake anything that promised relief, or even alleviation; her presence that lent sunshine to the darkened chamber, where the angels of life and death were striving for Willard Clendenon's soul.