YET SHALL HE LIVE."

We need not follow Mary through her ministrations. Her office was no
sinecure. It took not only much labor, but, as the Doctor had expected,
it took all her cunning. True, nature and experience had equipped her
for such work; but for all that there was an art to be learned, and time
and again there were cases of mental and moral decrepitude or deformity
that baffled all her skill until her skill grew up to them, which in
some cases it never did. The greatest tax of all was to seem, and to be,
unprofessional; to avoid regarding her work in quantity, and to be
simply, merely, in every case, a personal friend; not to become known as
a benevolent itinerary, but only a kind and thoughtful neighbor. Blessed
word! not benefactor--neighbor!

She had no schemes for helping the unfortunate by multitude. Possibly on
that account her usefulness was less than it might have been. But I am
not sure; for they say her actual words and deeds were but the seed of
ultimate harvests; and that others, moreover, seeing her light shine so
brightly along this seemingly narrow path, and moved to imitate her,
took that other and broader way, and so both fields were reaped.

But, I say, we need not follow her steps. They would lead deviously
through ill-smelling military hospitals, and into buildings that had
once been the counting-rooms of Carondelet-street cotton merchants, but
were now become the prisons of soldiers in gray. One of these places,
restored after the war as a cotton factor's counting-room again, had,
until a few years ago, a queer, clumsy patch in the plastering of one
wall, near the base-board. Some one had made a rough inscription on it
with a cotton sampler's marking-brush. It commemorates an incident. Mary
by some means became aware beforehand that this incident was going to
occur; and one of the most trying struggles of conscience she ever had
in her life was that in which she debated with herself one whole night
whether she ought to give her knowledge to others or keep it to herself.
She kept it. In fact, she said nothing until the war was all over and
done, and she never was quite sure whether her silence was right or
wrong. And when she asked Dr. Sevier if he thought she had done wrong,
he asked:--

"You knew it was going to take place, and kept silence?"

"Yes," said Mary.

"And you want to know whether you did right?"

"Yes. I'd like to know what you think."

He sat very straight, and said