the country. O, how I wish I was at home with my mother;
she'd take care o' me."

Rachel could not repress a smile at the rememberance of Jake's termagant
mother had her dirty, comfortless cottage, an how her intemperance in
administering such castisement as conveyed most grief to a boy's nature
first drove Jake to seek refuge with her father.

"No doubt it would be very comfortable," she answered, "if you could get
home to your mother; but there's no need of it, because you'll be well
before you could possibly reach there."

"No, I'll never be well," persisted Jake, "unless I have the best o'
care; but I feel much better now, since I find you here, for I'm sure
you'll take as much interest in me as a sister would."

She shuddered a little at the prospect of even temporary sisterly
relations to the fellow, but replied guardedly:

"Of course I'll do what I can for you, Jacob," and started to move away,
but he caught her dress and whimpered:

"O, don't go, Miss Rachel; do go and leave me all alone. Stay any way
till I'm fixed somehow comfortable."

"I half believe the booby will have hysterics," thought Rachel, with
curling lip. "Is this the man they praised so for his heroism? Does all
his manhood depend upon his health? Now he hasn't the spirit of a sick
kitten." Dreading a scene, however, she took her seat at the head of the
cot, and gave some directions for its arrangement.

Jake's symptoms grew worse rapidly, for he bent all his crafty energies
to that end. Refuge in the hospital from the unpleasant contingencies
attending duty in the field was a good thing, and it became
superexcellent when his condition made him the object of the care and
sympathy of so fine a young lady as Miss Rachel Bond. This he felt was
something like compensation for all that he had endured for the country,
and he would get as much of it as possible. His mind busied itself in
recalling and imitating the signs of suffering he had seen in others.

He breathed stretorously, groaned and sighed immoderately, and even had
little fits of well-feigned delirium, in which he babbled of home
and friends and the war, and such other things as had come within the
limited scope of his mental horizon.

"Don't leave me, Miss Rachel--don't leave me," he said, in one of
these simulated paroxysms, clutching at the same time, with a movement
singularly well directed for a delirious man, one of her delicate hands
in his great, coarse, and not-over-clea