"Sometimes it kills in three days, sometimes two weeks. Sometimes it's chronic and hangs on for years and then kills."
Every morning through the long black summer of the scourge he asked her with wistful tenderness if she were well. Her cheerful answers at last brought peace to his anxious heart and he gradually ceased to fear. She was too sweet and loving and God too good that she should die. Besides, both his father and mother had given him a lesson in quiet, simple heroism that steadied his nerves.
He looked at the rugged figure of his father with a new sense of admiration. He was no more afraid of Death than of Life. He was giving himself without a question in an utterly unselfish devotion to the stricken community. There were no doctors within thirty miles, and if one came he could but shake his head and advise simple remedies that did no good. Only careful nursing counted for anything. Without money, without price, without a murmur the father gave his life to this work. No neighbor within five miles was stricken that he did not find a place by that bedside in fearless, loving, unselfish service.
And when Death came, this simple friend went for his tools, cut down a tree, ripped the boards from its trunk, made the coffin, and with tender reverence dug a grave and lowered the loved one. He was doctor, nurse, casket-maker, grave-digger, comforter and priest. His reverent lips had long known the language of prayer.
With tireless zeal the mother joined in this ministry of love, and the Boy saw her slender dark figure walk so often beside trembling feet as they entered the valley of the great shadow, that he grew to believe that she led a charmed life. Nor did he fear when Dennis came one morning and in choking tones said that both his uncle and aunt were stricken in the little half-faced camp but a few hundred yards away. He was sorry for Dennis. He had never known father or mother—only this uncle and aunt.
"Don't you worry, Dennis," the Boy said tenderly. "You'll live with us if they die."
They both died within a few days. The night after the last burial, Dennis crawled into the loft with the Boy to be his companion for many a year.
And then the blow fell, swift, terrible and utterly unexpected. He had long ago made up his mind that God had flung about his mother's form the spell of his Almighty power and the pestilence that walked in the night dared not draw near. An angel with flaming sword stood beside their cabin door.
Last night in the soft moonlight a whip-poor-will was singing nearby and he fancied he saw the white winged sentinel, and laughed for joy.
When he climbed down from his loft next morning his mother was in bed and Sarah was alone over the fire cooking breakfast.