"Thank you, O, my darling, my Angel. Twenty fevers shall not kill me now," said George, but in a very weak voice.
Brave heart, George! Loving heart, Agnes! But fate willed otherwise. You were to be united, but not then, not then; not until you both had crossed the mysterious river which has but one tide, and that ever flowing in at Eternity's gates, but never returning.
Hour after hour Agnes battled with the demon fever which was gnawing at the vitals of her beloved George. At intervals her care seemed to get the better of the disorder, and to cause it to loosen its grip. But, alas! after twenty-four hours of unceasing toil and anxiety, poor devoted Agnes was forced to endure the mental agony of seeing Harkness die. The last thing he did was to smile up in her yearning face, and try to thank her for all she had done for him. His voice was gone; but she knew what the slowly moving parched lips were saying for all that. Slipping her arms under his shoulders, Agnes bent down, and raising him up ever so gently, she pressed him to her bosom and kissed him. Even as she did so Harkness breathed his last. With a deep sigh, Agnes allowed the corpse to sink gradually down again upon the bed, composed the limbs, closed the eyes, and bound up the fallen jaw. These sad offices finished, her next care was to see that the body was properly interred in a separate grave by itself—a matter which was quite difficult of accomplishment. But she succeeded in having the burial so effected.
The death of Mr. Harkness under such circumstances was, of course, quite distressing to Agnes Arnold, and somehow or other she could not banish from her mind a presentiment of an additional calamity that was about to befall her. Yet her mind was perfectly at ease, so far as she herself was concerned.
Never at any moment could death surprise her; for, from early years, she had lived up to the admonition of our Saviour, "Be ye also ready."
Yet this gloom, that wrapped itself around her like an ominous pall, she could not penetrate, nor cast from her, no matter how strenuously she tried to do so. More devoted even than before, did she now become in her ministrations to the sick and suffering people of Shreveport.
AGNES SAVES A CHILD, BUT DIES HERSELF.
The last family which Agnes nursed lived in the northern portion of the city, and consisted of a mother and three children; the youngest a baby twelve months old.
Ordinarily they had been in middling circumstances, but having lost her husband by a railroad accident six months previously, the widow was reduced to quite a straightened condition. And when the fever seized her, she was in utter despair at the thought of being taken away from her dear ones.