Then a spoon touched his lips, and a taste of brandy and water went all through him; and when he fell into sweet slumber and awoke, and found the teaspoon ready at his lips again, he had to lift a little the two hands lying before him on the coverlet to know that they were his--they were so wasted and yellow.

He turned his eyes, and through the white gauze of the mosquito-bar saw, for an instant, a strange and beautiful young face; but the lids fell over his eyes, and when he raised them again the blue-turbaned black nurse was tucking the covering about his feet.
"Sister!" No answer.
"Where is my mother ?" The negress shook her head.
He was too weak to speak again, but asked with his eyes so persistently, and so pleadingly, that by and by she gave him an audible answer.

He tried hard to understand it, but could not, it being in these words: "_Li pa' oule vini 'ci--li pas capabe_." Thrice a day, for three days more, came a little man with a large head surrounded by short, red curls and with small freckles in a fine skin, and sat down by the bed with a word of good cheer and the air of a commander.

At length they had something like an extended conversation.
"So you concluded not to die, eh?
Yes, I'm the doctor--Doctor Keene.

A young lady?
What young lady?
No, sir, there has been no young lady here.
You're mistaken.