“No, not in that case, certainly.”  And the man owed and withdrew.

All day long the wife waited for some more satisfactory reply to her advertisement, but no farther response to it was made.  The call of the tailor seemed like a mockery of her unhappy condition.

Night came, and all remained in doubt and darkness; and then the mind of Mrs. Fletcher turned to the visit of the tailor, half despairingly, in order to find some feeble gleam of hope.  Perhaps, she said to herself, as she thought about it, there is some mistake.  Perhaps it is my husband after all, and the man is in some error about his being a tailor.  As she thought, it suddenly flashed through her mind that there had been a good deal of mystery made by her husband about his situation in Cincinnati as well as in Louisville, which always struck her as a little strange.  Could it be possible that his real business was that of a tailor?  All at once she remembered that her husband had been particularly silent in regard to his early history.  Trembling with excitement, she left the house about eight o’clock in the evening, and started for the place where she remembered that the tailor said he lived.  He was in his shop, and recollected her the moment she entered.

“Can I see the man you told me was named Fletcher?” she asked.

“Yes, ma’am; and I sincerely hope there has been some mistake, and that you will find him to be your husband; for he is very ill, and needs to be nursed by a careful hand.”

Mrs. Fletcher followed the tailor up stairs, her heart scarcely beating under the pressure of suspense.  In a small chamber in the third story, the atmosphere of which was close, oppressive, and filled with an offensive odour, she was shown a man lying upon a bed.  She needed not a second glance, as the dim light fell upon his pale, emaciated face, to decide her doubts.  Her husband lay before her.  Eagerly she called his name, but his eyes did not open.  She spoke to him again and again, but he did not recognise, even if he heard her voice.

On inquiring, she found that he was ill with a violent fever, which the doctor said was about at its crisis.  This had been brought on by too long continued labour—­he having worked, often, sixteen and seventeen hours out of the twenty-four—­by that means earning a third more wages than any journeyman in the shop.

Alarmed and troubled as she was, Mrs. Fletcher was utterly confounded by all this.  She could not comprehend it.  All night she hovered over the pillow of her husband, giving him medicine at the proper times, placing the cooling draught to his lips or bathing his hot forehead.  Frequently she called his name, earnestly and tenderly, but the sound awoke no motions in his sluggish mind.  Toward morning, she was sitting with her face resting against a pillow, when his voice, speaking distinctly, aroused her from a half slumber into which she had, momentarily, lost herself.  In an instant she was leaning over him, with his name upon her lips.  His eyes were opens and he looked steadily into her face.  But it was evident that he did not know her.