Viny was hurrying, plashing the water over the sides of her buckets.  The importance of her mission was written in her black face.

“She’s awful thirsty,” she called to Peter in guarded tones.  “Nan called me to fetch some fraish water fum de well.”

Peter took the water that had been brought from the semi-cesspool at the end of the street.  Viny hurried across the street to home and to bed.  With the habitual twinge of his sanitary conscience, Peter considered the water in the buckets.

“We’ll have to boil this,” he said to the doctor.

“Boil it?” repeated Jallup, blankly.  Then, he added:  “Oh, yes—­boil.  Certainly.”

* * * * *

A repellent odor of burned paper, breathed air, and smoky lights filled the close room.  Nan had lighted another lamp and now the place was discernible in a dull yellow glow.  In the corner lay a half-burned wisp of paper.  Nan herself stood by the mound on the bed, putting straight the quilts that her patient had twisted awry.

“She sho am bad, Doctor,” said the colored woman, with big eyes.

Seen in the light, Dr. Jallup was a little sandy-bearded man with a round, simple face, oddly overlaid with that inscrutability carefully cultivated by country doctors.  With professional cheeriness, he approached the mound of bedclothes.

“A little under the weather, Aunt Ca’line?” He slipped his fingers alongside her throat to test her temperature, at the same time drawing a thermometer from his waistcoat pocket.

The old negress stirred, and looked up out of sick eyes.

“Doctor,” she gasped, “I sho got a misery heah.”  She indicated her stomach.

“How do you feel?” he asked hopefully.

The woman panted, then whispered: 

“Lak a knife was a-cuttin’ an’ a-tearin’ out my innards.”  She rested, then added, “Not so bad now; feels mo’ lak somp’n’s tearin’ in de nex’ room.”

“Like something tearing in the next room?” repeated Jallup, emptily.

“Yes, suh,” she whispered.  “I jes can feel hit—­away off, lak.”

The doctor attempted to take her temperature, but the thermometer in her mouth immediately nauseated her, so he slipped the instrument under her arm.

Old Caroline groaned at the slightest exertion, then, as she tossed her black head, she caught a glimpse of old Captain Renfrew.

She halted abruptly in her restlessness, stared at the old gentleman, wet her dry lips with a queer brown-furred tongue.

“Is dat you, Mars’ Milt?” she gasped in feeble astonishment.  A moment later she guessed the truth.  “I s’pose you had to bring de doctor.  ‘Fo’ Gawd, Mars’ Milt—­” She lay staring, with the covers rising and falling as she gasped for breath.  Her feverish eyes shifted back and forth between the grim old gentleman and the tall, broad-shouldered brown man at the foot of her bed.  She drew a baggy black arm from under the cover.