The third day after, at daybreak, Joseph called his father to his bedside to say that he had had a chill, and was suffering such pains in his head and back that he would like to lie quiet until they passed off.

The gentle father replied that it was undoubtedly best to do so, and preserved an outward calm.

He looked at his son's eyes; their pupils were contracted to tiny beads.

He felt his pulse and his brow; there was no room for doubt; it was the dreaded scourge--the fever.

We say, sometimes, of hearts that they sink like lead; it does not express the agony.
On the second day, while the unsated fever was running through every vein and artery, like soldiery through the streets of a burning city, and far down in the caverns of the body the poison was ransacking every palpitating corner, the poor immigrant fell into a moment's sleep.