u here."

"Where is 'here'? That's what I want to know?"

"My orders are not to let you talk. We've changed our positions now;
you've got to listen. For all that, you ought to be thankful you're not
in the Santa Brigida hospital, which was too far away. It's three hundred
years old and smells older. Felt as if you could bake bricks in it, and
no air gets in."

"But what were you doing at the hospital?"

"I went to see a fellow who told me he'd been fired out of our camp. He
came up just after the dago knifed you, and knocked out the man I was
grappling with, but got an ugly stab from one of the gang. We didn't find
this out until we had disposed of you. However, he's nearly all right and
they'll let him out soon."

"Ah!" said Dick. "That must be Payne, the storekeeper. But, you see, I
fired him. Why did he interfere?"

"I don't know. He said something about your being a white man and it was
three to one."

Dick pondered this and then his thoughts resumed their former groove.

"Who's the mulatto woman in black?"

"She's called Lucille. A nice old thing, and seems to have looked after
you well. When I came in she was singing you to sleep. Voice all gone, of
course, but I'd like to write down the song. It sounded like the genuine
article."

"What do you mean by the 'genuine article'?"

"Well, I think it was one of the plantation lullabies they used to sing
before the war; not the imitation trash fourth-rate composers turned out
in floods some years ago. That, of course, has no meaning, but the other
expressed the spirit of the race. Words quaint coon-English with a touch
of real feeling; air something after the style of a camp-meeting hymn,
and yet somehow African. In fact, it's unique music, but it's good."

"Hadn't I another nurse?" Dick asked.

Jake laughed. "I ought to have remembered that you're not musical. There
was a nursing sister of some religious order."

"I don't mean a nun," Dick persisted. "A girl came in now and then."

"It's quite possible. Some of them are sympathetic and some are curious.
No doubt, you were an interesting patient; anyhow, you gave the Spanish
doctor plenty trouble. He was rather anxious for a time; the fever you
had before the dago stabbed you complicated things." Jake paused and
looked at his watch. "Now I've got to quit. I had orders not to stay
long, but I'll come back soon to see how you're getting on."

Dick let him go and lay still, thinking drowsily. Jake had app