At the head of the stairs was a small room, containing a single bed and a window, which last looked out upon the garden and the graveyard beyond.  Its furniture was of the plainest kind, it being reserved for more common travelers, and here the landlord said ’Lena must be taken.  His wife would far rather have given her the front chamber, which was large, airy and light, but Uncle Tim Aldergrass said “No,” squealing out through his little peaked nose that “’twarn’t an atom likely he’d ever more’n half git his pay, anyway, and he warn’t a goin’ to give up the hull house.”

“How much more will it be if she has the best chamber,” asked Jerry, pulling at Uncle Tim’s coattail and leading him aside.  “How much will it be, ’cause if ’taint too much, she shan’t stay in that eight by nine pen.”

“A dollar a week, and cheap at that,” muttered Uncle Tim, while Jerry, going out behind the wood-house, counted over his funds, sighing as he found them quite too small to meet the extra, dollar per week, should she long continue ill.

“If I hadn’t of fooled so much away for tobacker and things, I shouldn’t be so plaguy poor now,” thought he, forgetting the many hearts which his hard-earned gains had made glad, for no one ever appealed in vain for help from Jerry Langley, who represented one class of Yankees, while Timothy Aldergrass represented another.

The next morning just as daylight was beginning to be visible, Jerry knocked softly at Aunt Betsey’s door, telling her that for more than an hour he’d heard the young lady takin’ on, and he guessed she was worse.  Hastily throwing on her loose gown Aunt Betsey repaired to ’Lena’s room, where she found her sitting up in the bed, moaning, talking, and whispering, while the wild expression of her eyes betokened a disordered brain.

“The Lord help us! she’s crazy as a loon.  Run for the doctor, quick!” exclaimed Mrs. Aldergrass, and without boot or shoe, Jerry ran off in his stocking-feet, alarming the physician, who immediately hastened to the inn, pronouncing ’Lena’s disease to be brain fever, as he had at first feared.

Rapidly she grew worse, talking of her home, which was sometimes in Kentucky and sometimes in Massachusetts, where she said they had buried her mother.  At other times she would ask Aunt Betsey to send for Durward when she was dead, and tell him how innocent she was.

“Didn’t I tell you there was something wrong?” Uncle Timothy would squeak.  “Nobody knows who we are harborin’ nor how much ’twill damage the house.”

But as day after day went by, and ’Lena’s fever raged more fiercely, even Uncle Tim relented, and when she would beg of them to take her home and bury her by the side of Mabel, where Durward could see her grave, he would sigh, “Poor critter, I wish you was to home,” but whether this wish was prompted by a sincere desire to please ’Lena, or from a more selfish motive, we are unable to state.