Rosa had a basket on her arm filled with such comforting delicacies as the surgeon had advised. She set about administering them to her brother's orderly, when a feeble voice in a cot a few feet away fell upon her ear. She started. Though almost a whisper, there was a strange familiarity in the low tone. She turned to the steward—
"Who is in the third cot from here?"
"Let me see. Oh, yes, number seven; that's a man named Paling."
"And the next?"
"Number eight; that's a man named Jake, or Jakes, I'm blessed if I am certain. They've been out of their head since they come. They're the two I spoke of who ain't no more small-pox than I have."
"May I see them?"
"Certainly. I'll see that they're in shape for inspection, and call you."
He disappeared behind the curtain and could be heard in a kindly, jovial tone:
"There, sonny, keep kivered; the lady is coming to bring you something better than the doctor's gruel, so lie still."
Beckoning to Rosa, he made way for her to enter the narrow aisle of number seven, but he nearly fell over the man across the bed, when Rosa, with a shriek, fell upon the body of number seven, crying: