“Never,” muttered McCall.

“How soon can she leave this—­this place?” she said, turning as if he had not spoken to Pollard.

“As soon as she is able to be moved.  But,” hesitating, with a doubtful look at McCall, “is that plan best?”

“Why, she’s his wife!” with her innocent eyes wide.  “He has no right to desert her.  She will die if she is not properly cared for,” turning to McCall.

“Do you stay with me:  don’t leave me,” holding Kitty’s sleeve.  “If you would nurse me, I should get well.”

“It is impossible that the lady should nurse you,” said Pollard.

Kitty sat down:  she began to tremble and turn white.  “She has nobody but me.  I’ll stay,” she said quietly.

McCall beckoned his fellow-physician out into the corridor.

“My dear fellow—­” Pollard began.

“No:  I know you sympathize with me.  But we will not talk of this matter.  Is that woman dying?”

“I’m afraid—­that is, I think not.  She is decidedly better to-day than she was last night.  With care she may recover.”

Kitty came out and stood with them in the corridor.  McCall looked at her with amazement.  The shy, silly school-girl, afraid to find her way about Berrytown, bore herself in this desperate juncture like the sagest of matrons.

“Is there no hospital to which she can be taken?” she said to Pollard.

“Yes, of course, of course.”

“I’ll go with her there, then.  You know,” laying her hand on McCall’s arm, “you did marry her.  You ought to try to help her poor body and soul as long as she lives.”

“Would you have me take her as my wife again?”

“Not for an hour!” cried Kitty vehemently.  She went into the cell, but came back in a moment:  “Will you bring me some breakfast?  I shall not be of much use here until it comes.”

“She has more of the angel in her than any woman I ever knew,” muttered McCall.

“She has a good deal of common sense, apparently,” rejoined Pollard.

* * * * *

Kitty went with McCall’s wife to the hospital, and helped to nurse her for a week.  Pains and chills and nausea she could help, but for the deeper disease of soul, for the cure of which Kitty prayed on her knees, often with tears, there was little hope in her simple remedies, unless the cure and its evidence lay deep enough for only God’s eye to see.

The woman’s nature, of a low type at birth, had grown more brutal with every year of drunkenness and vice.  She died at last, alone with Kitty.

“She said, the last thing, ‘God be merciful to me a sinner!’” Kitty told the chaplain.  “But I am afraid she hardly understood the meaning.”

“He understood, my dear child.  We can leave her with Him, You must go home now:  you have done all you could.  Doctor McCall will go with you?”

“No, I shall go alone:  I came alone.”