on succeeded the far more dangerous state of
low fever, through which I never left him. Care and incessant watching
could alone save him, and I devoted myself to the last with the resolve
to make this effort the first of a new and changed existence.

Day and night in the sick-room, I lost appetite and strength, while an
unceasing care preyed upon me and deprived me even of rest. The very
vacillations of the sick man's malady had affected my nerves, rendering
me overanxious, so that just as he had passed the great crisis of the
malady, I was stricken down with it myself.

My first day of convalescence, after seven weeks of fever, found me
sitting at a little window that looked upon the sea, or rather the
harbor of Sebastopol, where two frigates and some smaller vessels were
at anchor. A group of lighters and such unpicturesque craft occupied
another part of the scene, engaged, as it seemed, in operations for
raising other vessels. It was in gazing for a long while at these, and
guessing their occupation, that I learned to trace out the past, and why
and how I had come to be sitting there. Every morning the German servant
who tended me through my illness used to bring me the "Herr Baron's"
compliments to know how I was, and now he came to say that as the "Herr
Baron" was able to walk so far, he begged that he might be permitted
to come and pay me a visit I was aware of the Russian custom of giving
titles to all who served the Government in positions of high trust, and
was therefore not astonished when the announcement of the "Herr Baron"
was followed by the entrance of Harpar, who, sadly reduced, and leaning
on a crutch, made his way slowly to where I sat. I attempted to rise to
receive him, but he cried out, half sternly,--"Sit still! we are neither
of us in good trim for ceremony."

He motioned to the servants to leave us alone; then laying his wasted
hand in mine, for we were each too weak to' grasp the other, he said,--

"I know all about it It was you saved my life, and risked your own to do
it."

I muttered out some unmeaning words--I know not well what--about duty
and the like.

"I don't care a brass button for the motive. You stood to me like a
man." As he said this, he looked hard at me, and, shading the light with
his hand, peered into my face. "Have n't we met before this? Is not your
name Potts?"

"Yes, and you're Harpar."

He reddened, but so slightly that but for the previous paleness of his
sickly