Soon Adele opened the door and approaching the table gently, placed upon it the gruel.  When she turned her eyes full of sympathy and kindness upon him and inquired for his health, he started with a remembrance that gave him both pain and pleasure.  She reminded him strangely of the being he loved more than any other on earth—­his sister.  He answered her question confusedly.

She then raised his head upon the pillow with one hand and presented the cup to his lips with the other.  He drank its contents, mechanically.

Adele proceeded noiselessly to arrange the somewhat disordered room, and after placing a screen between it and the bed, raised a window, through winch the warm September atmosphere wandered in, indolently bathing his weary brow.  As he felt its soft undulations on his face, and looking around the pleasant apartment observed the graceful motions of his youthful nurse, the scenes through which he had recently passed, appeared like those of an ugly nightmare, and floated away from his memory.  The old flow of his life seemed to come back again and he gave himself up to pleasant dreams.

Mr. Brown continued thenceforward to improve in health, though slowly.  Mr. Norton slept on a cot in his room every night and spent a part of every day with him, assisting in his toilet, conversing with him of the affairs, business and political, of their native State, and reading to him occasionally from books furnished by Mr. Dubois’s library.

He informed Mr. Brown of his mission to this wild region of Miramichi, and the motives that induced it.  That gentleman admired the purity and singleness of purpose which had led this man, unfavored indeed by a careful classical culture, but possessing many gifts and much practical knowledge, thus to sacrifice himself in this abyss of ignorance and sin.  He was drawn to him daily by the magnetism which a strong, yet heroic and genial soul always exercises upon those who approach it.

In a few days he had, without any effort of the good man and involuntarily on his own part, confided to him the heavy weight that troubled his conscience.

“Ah!” said Mr. Norton, his eyes full of profound sorrow, and probing the wound now laid open to the quick, “it was a terrible weakness to have yielded thus to the wiles of that artful foreigner.  May Heaven forgive you!”

Surprised and shocked at this reception of his confession, Mr. Brown, who had hoped-for consolation or counsel from his sympathizing companion, felt cut to the heart.  His countenance settled into an expression of utter despair.

“Why have you sought so diligently to restore me to health,—­to a disgraced and miserable existence?  You must have known, from the delirous words of my illness, of which you have told me, that life would be a worthless thing to me.  You should have permitted me the privilege of death”, said he bitterly.

“The privilege of death!” said Mr. Norton.  “Don’t you know, my dear sir, that a man unprepared to live, is also unprepared to die?  Every effort I have put forth during your illness has been for the purpose of saving you for a happy life here, and for a blissful immortality”.