During the last few days a great change had taken place in her husband.  He went out and returned with a pallid, gloomy face.  Taciturn and wasting away with anxiety, he withdrew from the members of his family even when at home, repelling his wife curtly and impatiently when, yielding to the impulse of her heart, she approached him with encouraging words.  Night brought him no sleep, and he left his couch before morning dawned, to pace restlessly to and fro, or gaze at Bessie, who to him alone still tried to show recognition by a faint smile.

When Maria returned home, she instantly went to the child and found Doctor Bontius with her.  The physician shook his head at her appearance, and said the delicate little creature’s life would soon be over.  Her stomach had been injured during the first months of want; now it refused to do its office, and to hope for recovery would be folly.

“She must live, she must not die!” cried Maria, frantic with grief and yet fall of hope, like a true mother, who cannot grasp the thought that she is condemned to lose her child, even when the little heart is already ceasing to beat and the bright eyes are growing dim and closing.  “Bessie, Bessie, look at me!  Bessie, take this nice milk.  Only a few drops!  Bessie, Bessie, you must not die.”

Peter had entered the room unobserved and heard the last words.  Holding his breath, he gazed down at his darling, his broad shoulders shook, and in a stifled, faltering voice he asked the physician:  “Must she die?”

“Yes, old friend; I think so!  Hold up your head!  You have much still left you.  All five of Van Loo’s children have died of the plague.”

Peter shuddered, and without taking any notice of Maria, passed from the room with drooping head.  Bontius followed him into his study, laid his hand on his arm, and said: 

“Our little remnant of life is made bitter to us, Peter.  Barbara says a corpse was laid before your door early this morning.”

“Yes.  When I went out, the livid face offered me a morning greeting.  It was a young person.  All whom death mows down, the people lay to my charge.  Wherever one looks—­corpses!  Whatever one hears—­curses!  Have I authority over so many lives?  Day and night nothing but sorrow and death before my eyes;—­and yet, yet, yet—­oh God! save me from madness!”

Peter clasped both hands over his brow; but Bontius found no word of comfort, and merely exclaimed:  “And I, and I?  My wife and child ill with a fever, day and night on my feet, not to cure, but to see people die.  What has been learned by hard study becomes childish folly in these days, and yet the poor creatures utter a sigh of hope when I feel their pulses.  But this can’t go on, this can’t go on.  Day before yesterday seventy, yesterday eighty-six deaths, and among them two of my colleagues.”

“And no prospect of improvement?”

“To-morrow the ninety will become a hundred—­the one hundred will become two, three, four, five, until at last one individual will be left, for whom there will be no grave-digger.”