“Bekaise they're about me continually an'—let me see—who are you? I know you. One o' them said a while ago, 'May God relieve you and restore you wanst more to health;' I heard the voice.”
“Dear Sarah, don't you know me?” reiterated Mave; “look at me—don't you know Mave Sullivan—your friend, Mave Sullivan, that knows your value and loves you.”
“Who?” she asked, starting a little; “who—what name is that?—who is it?—say it again.”
“Don't you know Mave Sullivan, that loves you, an' feels for your miserable situation, my dear Sarah.”
“I never had a guardian angel, nor any one to take care o' me—nor a mother, many a time—often—often the whole world—jist to look at her face—an' to know—feel—love me. Oh, a dhrink, a dhrink—is there no one to get me a dhrink! I'm burnin', I'm burnin'—is there no one to get me a dhrink! Mave Sullivan, Mave Sullivan, have pity on me! I heard some one name her—I heard her voice—I'll die without a dhrink.”
Mave looked about the desolate shed, and to her delight spied a tin porringer, which Sarah's unhappy predecessors had left behind them; seizing this, she flew to a little stream that ran by the place, and filling the vessel, returned and placed it to Sarah's lips. She drank it eagerly, and looking piteously and painfully up into Mave's face, she laid back her head, and appeared to breathe more freely. Mave hoped that the drink of cold water would have cooled her fever and assuaged her thirst, so as to have brought her to a rational state—such a state as would have enabled the poor girl to give some account of the extraordinary situation in which she found herself, and of the circumstances which occasioned her to take shelter in such a place. In this, however, she was disappointed. Sarah having drank the cold water, once more shut her eyes, and fell into that broken and oppressive slumber which characterizes the terrible malady which had stricken her down. For some time she waited with this benign expectation, but seeing there was no likelihood of her restoration, to consciousness, she again filled the tin vessel, and placing it upon a stone by her bedside, composed the poor girl's dress about her, and turned her steps toward a scene in which she expected to find equal misery.
It is not our intention, however, to dwell upon it. It is sufficient to say, that she found the Daltons—who, by the way, had a pretty long visit from the pedlar—as her brother had said, beginning to recover, and so far this was consolatory; but there was not within the walls of the house, earthly comfort, or food or nourishment of any kind. Poor Mary was literally gasping for want of sustenance, and a few hours more might have been fatal to them all. There was no fire—no gruel, milk or anything that could in the slightest possible degree afford them relief. Her brother Denny, however, who had been desired by her to fetch his purchases directly to their cabin, soon returned, and almost at a moment that might be called the crisis, not of their malady, for that had passed, but of their fate itself, his voice was heard, shouting from a distance that he had discharged his commission; for we may observe that no possible inducement could tempt him to enter that or any other house where fever was at work. Mave lost little time in administering to their wants and their weaknesses. With busy and affectionate hands she did all that could be done for them at that particular juncture. She prepared food for Mary, made whey and gruel, and left as much of her little purse as she thought could be spared from the wants of Sarah M'Gowan.
In the course of two or three days afterwards, however, Sarah's situation was very much changed for the better; but until that change was effected, Mave devoted as much time to the poor girl as she could possibly spare. Nor was the force of her example without its beneficial effects in the neighborhood, especially as regarded Sarah herself. The courage she displayed, despite her constitutional timidity, communicated similar courage to others, in consequence of which Sarah was scarcely ever without some one in her bleak shed to watch and take care of her. Her father, however, on hearing of her situation, availed himself of what some of the neighbors considered a mitigation of her symptoms, and with as much care and caution as possible, she was conveyed home on a kind of litter, and nurse-tended by an old woman from the next village, Nelly having disappeared from the neighborhood.
The attendance of this old woman, by the way, surprised the Prophet exceedingly. He had not engaged her to attend on Sarah, nor could he ascertain who had. Upon this subject she was perfectly inscrutable. All he could know or get out of her was, that she had been engaged; and he could perceive also, that she was able to procure her many general comforts, not usually to be had about the sick bed of a person in her condition of life.
Mave, during all her attendance upon Sarah, was never able to ascertain whether, in the pauses of delirium, she had been able to recognize her. At one period, while giving her a drink of whey, she looked up into her eyes with something like a glance of consciousness, mingled with wonder, and appeared about to speak, but in a moment it was gone, and she relapsed into her former state.