Slipping her arms under his shoulders, Agnes bent down, and raising him up ever so gently, she pressed him to her bosom and kissed him.  Even as she did so Harkness breathed his last.  With a deep sigh, Agnes allowed the corpse to sink gradually down again upon the bed, composed the limbs, closed the eyes, and bound up the fallen jaw.  These sad offices finished, her next care was to see that the body was properly interred in a separate grave by itself—­a matter which was quite difficult of accomplishment.  But she succeeded in having the burial so effected.

The death of Mr. Harkness under such circumstances was, of course, quite distressing to Agnes Arnold, and somehow or other she could not banish from her mind a presentiment of an additional calamity that was about to befall her.  Yet her mind was perfectly at ease, so far as she herself was concerned.

Never at any moment could death surprise her; for, from early years, she had lived up to the admonition of our Saviour, “Be ye also ready.”

Yet this gloom, that wrapped itself around her like an ominous pall, she could not penetrate, nor cast from her, no matter how strenuously she tried to do so.  More devoted even than before, did she now become in her ministrations to the sick and suffering people of Shreveport.

AGNES SAVES A CHILD, BUT DIES HERSELF.

The last family which Agnes nursed lived in the northern portion of the city, and consisted of a mother and three children; the youngest a baby twelve months old.

Ordinarily they had been in middling circumstances, but having lost her husband by a railroad accident six months previously, the widow was reduced to quite a straightened condition.  And when the fever seized her, she was in utter despair at the thought of being taken away from her dear ones.

But when they brought Agnes to nurse her, and told her of the wonderful good fortune that always attended the heroic girl, she seemed to take fresh spirit and gain strength.

As yet the baby was unscathed by the dreadful plague, And it would have been sent away, could they have got any person to take it.  That, however, was impossible.

“Never mind, Mrs. Green, do not let that subject worry you any more.  I will take good care of the baby.  They shall not take it away from you,” said Agnes, hugging the infant to her.

“O, God bless you!  God bless you, always,” exclaimed the poor mother, thrilled with the deepest gratitude.  “My darling! my baby! my baby!”

True to her word, Agnes never neglected the little thing, though sometimes, between it and her patients, she was nearly beside herself.  Reader, if you are a woman, and have ever had even an ordinary sickness in your household, you can easily comprehend the position in which Agnes was placed with her three patients to nurse, and an infant to care for at the same time.  Yet she never murmured, never became impatient.