"We thank you," said Matthew Clarkson. "Help is sorely needed."
"Come with me," said Girard. "My chaise is here. Help is scarce. Too many who should be of us have fled." As they went out, he added: "I owe this city much, as some day it will know. You are going to a scene of ungoverned riot, of drunken negro nurses; but it is to be changed, and soon, too."
James Hamilton's former country seat on Bush Hill was crowded with the dying and the dead; but there were two devoted doctors, and soon there was better order and discipline.
De Courval went daily across the doomed city to his loathsome task, walking thither after his breakfast. He helped to feed and nurse the sick, aided in keeping the beds decent, and in handling the many who died, until at nightfall, faint and despairing, he wandered back to his home. Only once Schmidt asked a question, and hearing his sad story, was silent, except to say: "I thought as much. God guard you, my son!"
One day, returning, he saw at evening on Front Street a man seated on a door-step. He stopped, and the man looked up. It was the blacksmith Offley.
"I am stricken," he said. "Will thee help me?"
"Surely I will." De Courval assisted him into the house and to bed. He had sent his family away. "I have shod my last horse, I fear. Fetch me Dr. Hutchinson."
"He died to-day."
"Then another—Dr. Hodge; but my wife must not know. She would come. Ask Friend Pennington to visit me. I did not approve of thee, young man. I ask thee pardon; I was mistaken. Go, and be quick."
"I shall find some one." He did not tell him that both Pennington and the physician were dead.