actually starving, as well
as sick. Give them all the assistance you can. Rich people can take
care of themselves, but the poor cannot."

This was faithfully promised, and, we may add, just as faithfully
performed.

During the next ten days Agnes was kept continually busy, night and
day, in her arduous and dangerous duties. But by strict adherence to
her original design and method, she kept herself in perfect health and
spirits, and in the midst of her labors and anxieties she found time
to send daily messages to her mother.

On the succeeding Monday, while nursing a poor woman in the northern
part of the city, a note was brought to her by the dead-wagon man--the
same genius with whom Agnes had had the encounter.

"Missus Agonyess," said he, trying to pronounce her name correctly, as
he remembered the correction--an effort which betrayed him into a
double error--"I wuz asked to fetch this here letter to you. It wuz
giv to me by a black feller who's a nussin' in the little hospital. A
young man guv it to him last night, and promised to give him his gold
watch ef he'd find you out and git it to yer."

"Hospital--young man--gold watch!" ejaculated Agnes in a disjointed
way, as she took the letter.

A glance at the handwriting was sufficient, and her face grew deadly
white as she opened and read:

"Agnes--Angel Agnes, I hear they call you--and they may well call you
that--darling, I found out the trick by which we were estranged. I was
foolish, I was wrong to treat you so. And when I learned you had come
here into this pest-hole, I was crazy with anxiety for fear you would
take the fever and die. I did not know how I _did_ love you till
then. God forgive me, guilty wretch that I am, for driving you to such
a desperate piece of romance. I came here to tell you how sorry I was,
and to ask you to take me bask to my old place in your heart. But now
I am afraid it is too late. I have been hanging around the town a week
or longer, trying to get in on some train. Not succeeding in my object
this way, I have been obliged to walk in by night, concealing myself
in the daytime, and walking forward again in the darkness. Thus I have
eluded them, and got in. But so far I have been unable to find you,
and now I fear it too late, for I am sick with the fever in the
hospital.

"I have given myself up to die, for they are not especially kind or
attentive to me, as they think I ought to have stayed away, and not
come in and added