“Yes,” responded FitzMaurice. “There is Barton, he needs the money, and he owes us; he ought to go and do this; he could then square our account.”
Barton was one of the men in the warehouse of the firm and had a young wife and four children. When the offer was made to him in the office of his employers, he answered:
“Gentlemen, my life and my family are just as dear to me as either of yours. I would not risk my life in that service for all of your combined wealth. My life is exactly as dear to me as to any prince or potentate.”
Mr. Milling looked at Robert FitzMaurice with a dissatisfied air, as he followed Barton’s footsteps and closed the door behind him, while he said:
“I believe Barclugh will be in pretty bad shape, before we can get any one to nurse him.”
In the meantime, however, the news of the fever began to travel outside of Philadelphia. Express messengers went on horseback to the north and to the south, and on the way to Germantown, the news of Barclugh’s fever reached Dorminghurst.
Dr. Greydon at once notified his wife and daughter. In less than half an hour his carriage was ready, and he had left, prepared with delicacies and medicines to succor a fellow being. There was no calculation of consequences on his part.
Mollie asked her father if she might accompany him, but he explained that she could be of little assistance, so she stood on the portico, and watched her father’s carriage until it had reached the road through the avenue of hemlocks.
But no sooner had her father’s carriage vanished through the trees, than she ran with all of her might to the lodge of Segwuna.
With eyes full of despair, she ran up to Segwuna, and exclaimed: